But pfr, and I know this is controversial, the great Child was crystal clear that in his view the original and great old Ballads had been written by the elite and not the lower ranks. This point has been made, with references to what Child actually wrote, on this thread and elsewhere. Child didn't imagine that they came from the lower ranks and villeins any more than he imagined that the classics of Ancient Greece came from slaves or plebs.

'The people', or 'the folk', yes, in Child's view, but for him this meant 'the people' as in the whole civilisation/culture, not in any way the lower orders. Child was explicit about this.

So whatever we might feel about 'public schools' (for US readers this means private non-state schools) and the products thereof, I don't think we can dismiss it as non-authentic in terms of the national tradition for public school accents to be singing it. However, I agree that more or less everything sounds better with at least a Midlands accent if not a downright Northern one.

But I think we can agree that folk music is being played by a lot of middle class people in the UK today. That point is relevant to the thread as I see it.