I think we seem to be walking up the old blind alley here once again
Instead of askin who made our folk songs we should be asking why they were made
The 'print origins' people have provided their answer - for money - after half a centuries experience in folk song, that is the very last conclusion I would have reached
I think the answers to the origins and the functions of our folk songs lie in the songs themselves, not their manifestations on paper
For me, the greatest omission in Roud's book is his failure to include song-texts leaving us unable to place his arguments next to the subject of his eponymously chosen title a work on folk songs with the subject matter removed.

I firmly believe that our songs are an important part of our social history - you can't deal with them in this manner if you believe them to be commercial commodities; you can't even do that if you believe them to me merely 'entertainments'

They were made to entertain in part and they were taken up and sold, but once you start to examine them in their social context you have to realise thay are something much more than that.

I flicked through Bamford's thumbnail autobiography last night - his only reference to his songs (pooms) was the effect one of them had on his fellow-radicals - they were part of his life as a worker and a radical, not a way of putting a crust on the table.
This made them a voice of working-people's experience and struggle.
These industrial songs are only a tiny part of the equation.

WE were privileged enough to be able to look at two major traditions - one still living (for a time), and one moribund but still warm.
Apart from the repertoires the common feature of the two was the obvious desire, even need to make songs in order to capture the experiences and feelings of the communities.
That, for me, has to be a major clue of who made our folk songs.

Jim