Folk song began centuries before the the minstrels - lllyd describes prin=mitive honey gatherers singing to bees to calm them while they gathered he hobey
Bowra in his work on primitive song gives gives a similar description
This becomes a depressing nonsense - I don't know how long you have been at this (you give the impression of not very long) but you are flying in the face of a century of scolarship with out-of context quotes you seem not to have digested.
This really becomes tiresome - sorry
Folksong as we have it, is the result of ordinary people turning their emotions and experience into verse
THey wouldn't even have had access to the work of minstrels - go compare the songs in minstrel books and the difference if stark
Thank oyu for confirming many of the views I and thousands of others have held for decades
Jim