please define folk song

Aargh, no, not that!

I think Jim's conflation of the 'print origins' theory with the practices of English folk clubs since the 1980s muddies the water. The people who preferred to hear American singer-songwriter or modern pop music in their folk cubs would not have given a FF about whether folk songs originated as broadsides, and by the same token Steve Roud doesn't give that kind of music house room.

Roud and '1954' are in broad agreement over what makes songs 'folk' and that is based on the way the songs were used in communities where singing was still actively practiced.