"I think this depends on the era, Jim"
Our collection covers the Pepys collection up to the end of the 19th century - pretty comprehensive Brian
You may add doorstep of a set, The Universal Songster to that - hardly a singable song amongst them
That applies ti=o Holloway and Black's 'Later English Broadsides' - a few of them would be poor examples of traditional songs if scrubbed up, but by then, the oral process was on its last legs.

It's been up several times Vic, but 'yer 'ttis again:
""If 'Little Boxes' and 'The Red Flag' are folk songs. we need a new term to describe 'The Outlandish Knight'. Searching for Lambs' and 'The Coal-owner and the Pitman's Wife'."
The television programme on the tradition made sometime in the eighties when they chose the title 'The Other Music'
That does it for me
If you don't accept that out folk songs are unique, I don't thin we have a point of reference between us

"Most of the ones we know about were, because the sellers sang them to get sales,"
We have very little record of what the broadside sellers sang Jack, or how they sang them - all we have are the published collections, all of which were taken from print rather than from street singers
We actually recorded Irish ballad singer - he took his father's traditional songs and recited them over the counter to a printer, then went off and sold the sheets in the fairs and markets
I can well believe some of the broadsides came from a similar source

This seems to be getting nowhere fast - nobody is giving a reason why they prefer to believe the hacks made them rather than the people
Maybe it's time to go our separate ways
I'm in the midst of people who are a generation away from a living tradition who totally accept that their songs are folk songs in the tue sense
Our music tradition has an ensured future and, hopefully, the song tradition will catch up with it
That hasn't been achieved by adopting the 'singing horse' theory or quibbling about what "folk song" means
Jim