We can at least assume one thing from Child's collective comments; his desire to obtain material from field notes and manuscripts, and his scathing comments about the redactions of relatively sophisticated editors, demonstrate clearly that he prized material that had come direct from what we would call source singers. However, even in this he was not consistent in that he prized Anna Gordon's redacted pieces above all else. Your quote, Tzu, is chickenfeed alongside some of his attacks on later editors.