Value has nothing to do with collecting or shouldn't have
It is not up to us to decide the value of what the folk had to offer and the more they had to say about their songs and stories, the better.
The uniqueness of their songs and stories become obvious the minute you talk to the singers - they regard them as different - who are we to argue ?
I've put up far too many examples of their doing so for it to be necessary to repeat but it really is time sme of the 'researchers' and singers started to listen to and act on what they had to say

The fact that ballads like Edward still remained important to the older generation, particularlty Travellers is important in its own right - I will repeat what Wexford traveller, Pop's Johnny Connors said about it because I believe it can't be repeated enough

“I’d say the song, myself, goes back to.... depicts Cain and Abel in the Bible and where Our Lord said to Cain.... I think this is where the Travellers Curse come from too, because Our Lord says to Cain, “Cain”, says Our Lord, “you have slain your brother, and for this”, says Our Lord, says he, “and for this, be a wanderer and a fugitive on the earth”.
“Not so Lord” says he, “this punishment is too severe, and whoever finds me”, says he, “will slay me, “says he “or harass me”.
“Not so”, says Our Lord, says he, “whoever finds Cain and punishes or slains (sic) Cain, I will punish them sevenfold”.
And I think this is where the Travellers curse come from.
Anyway, the song depicts this, this er....
1 call it Cain and Abel anyway; there never was a name for the song, but that what I call it, you know, the depiction of Cain and Abel.”

I believe our old songs are important history carriers describing the experiences of those most effected but least consulted by the events described - wars, land siezure, upheaval from countryside to towns, women used as ladders to be climbed to improve social status, those who follewd their men to war and loaded the guns on the front line.... all writ large in our folk songs
We recorded a song here in Clare that described (in comic terms) an event during the War of Independence that failed to make the history books and has been completely forgotten by today's locals
HERE

Lumping these songs in with those bought on song-sheets and in books is, to me, to reduce the importance of our traditional songs
We have yet to follow up our discovery of the local song-making traditions that were features of rural life throughout rural Ireland, particularly among the undocumented Traveller communities
We haven't begun to understand how our oral songmaking worked and if we are ever to get anywhere making an educated guess much of the information lies in the songs themselves and what the singers had to say about them

Time after time we were told how important these songs were to the people who retained them (even to the extent of one singer describing how he once tried to teach his dog to sing to stop them from dying with him)
If they weer important to those people surely they have to be important to us (even if it is only for their continuing entertainment value)
Jim