"actually carries a degree of speculation."
It does, I suppose, but I think that in the circumstances anything anybody claims is based on speculation, most certainly attributing any song to print origins if you have no proof as to whether it appeared in an earlier form
I have never claimed that any specific accepted English folk-song began orally - I know many Irish ones must have.

Martha Bayles:
She is/was an American academic from Boston College - her usage was Ameican and referred to Lomax and later to Pete Seeger's alleged attack on Dylan's (or should that be Zimmerman's :-)) sound system
My reference was to the use of the term in the British revival
Can we leave it at that please?
Jim Carroll