"eference: Child's article on folk ballads for Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia 1900."
As I said - Child was no authority on the oral tradition and he said various things iat various times on origins - nothing was definitive with him
THe only thing he said definitely was that most broadsides were crap but most selective print originists tend to overlook that
There is no definite answer to who made the folk songs - it seems to be down to "if the folk were capable of making the ballads they probably
When you consider that "the sweeping of the London streets queued up to see the first performance of Hamlet and totaly Illiterate Travellers liviving ion pariah communities right up to the twentieth century were capable of telling story that stretched over three nights, Barbara Allen must have been easy meat   
No getting around the idea that there are some people who don't want the people to have made the ballads because it disrupts their concept of the order of things, of course
Jim