I was going to say that for the Cob Coalin' song Harry probably was a 'source singer' but the mudcat thread on it quotes him as saying he collected it from local children.

He gave a new lease of life, amongst an adult audience, to a song that had survived by oral transmission amongst children for at least 50 years having, the consensus seems to be, originated as a mainly adult pace-egging song.

Most of his other songs had already died, some having had an initially short life as topical broadsides.

How long have people been doing that? Did music hall performers do the same?