I was not speaking for Vic, I was saying that I hadn't read his post that way.

If you mean why not tell me why these songs should be the products of desk-bound city hacks who were notorious for their bad poetry?

Why should I answer it? I didn't suggest it. I don't recall anyone suggesting it. Does Roud? I didn't notice it in there.

I was pressing the issue of Laycock because you introduced him to the discussion and I have known for 50 years that his biographer said that he wrote poems that were sold and sung in the streets and I knew I had that description on the shelf behind me to quite from. I don't know much, but it is enough to make me suspect the accuracy of what you say.

I don't know the background of all the broadside writers, neither do you or anyone else. So we don't know if there were people similar to Laycock (and maybe the Muxton carter who is described in a quote in Roud's book) going back through the centuries.