Mudcatters, alléz!

No matter how many times I have gotten into Van-Zandt-ian singer-songwriter-isness, or relatively-outlaw-esque, blues-inflected country (or Americana, as the kids say), I've always come back to my earliest, most fundamental inspirations/influences: Alan A'Dale and Fflewdur Fflam, bards par excellence.

Who out there in the stream of folk music would have been, or could be, a writer and performer in that romantic bardic tradition?

I think of Donovan Leitch, of early Burl Ives, and Martin Carthy and Pete Seeger if we include those with a concertedly political bent.

I've been a poet for almost as long as I've been able to write, far longer than I've been a musician of any caliber. I find that the ability to compose, or at least to deliver simply and directly, a love song, a ballad, a bit of gilded-lily verse set to a hummable tune, largely got lost over decades of commercialization.

Suggestions as to records or videos of performers I the vein of the itinerant bards of yore?