https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2019/08/the-child-ballads.html

According to Child the folk process died years ago
"Child was a textual scholar rather than a field collector, and he put his massive ballad compilation together by seeking out every manuscript copy of ballad material he could lay his hands on, with the help of a small army of fellow scholars searching out songs and fragments of songs throughout the British Isles. Another reason he depended on manuscripts rather than the memories of folk musicians was that the British popular ballad, in his view, was no longer a living tradition. The ballads he sought were the ancient ones -- not the “broadside ballads” that dominated the nineteenth-century folk musician’s repertoire. Broadsheet ballads were authored song lyrics designed to fit traditional tunes, cheaply printed and sold for pennies on street corners from the sixteenth century onward. These were contemporary compositions, rather than ancient poetry from the oral tradition -- though sometimes broadside ballads mimicked the language of much older songs, and determining which was which was a problem Professor Child was both intrigued and vexed by.

His view is not one that I share. It almost comes down to the following argument: We ain't got a clue who the author is therefore it must be genuine folk rather than plastic manufactured folk
My view is simplistic: If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck,
then a duck it surely is. If you want to argue whether it is a muscovy duck or a khaki campbell duck, or a Welsh harlequin duck that is a choice for you. .