I really think it to be more than a little begrudging to accuse many of the early collectors of "fakery" and dishonesty - they were song collectors gathering songs they thought worth singing, not social historians.'

I'm trying to express this in what seems to me less emotive and more logical language; it's tricky:

I think it is very begrudging to point out examples of early collectors and publishers of songs published material with false claims about its provenance because they were ?publishers? of songs they thought worth singing, not ? people making a claim that these were actually songs that originated with other people.

Reason for proposed change: Because if what they published/distributed/marketed (sorry but a lot of these people did sell volumes) was not 'gathered' but self-authored, it doesn't seem quite accurate to describe them as people who were 'collecting' songs they thought were worth singing. It is illogical.

Does anybody see what I am getting at here? Plus the way the point is made begs a lot of questions about the motives of some of these folk. It seems to me that some of them then sold books including these songs, so there just might have been some financial motive, some motive in terms of 'status' among the group of people with similar interests? They may from time to time or even most of the time have collected songs they thought were worth singing, but that isn't the be all and the end all of it.

Moreover, it seems to me that people in the 20th century providing accounts of what these people (eg Percy etc) did cannot in all honesty 'pretend' that songs that they know were fabrications or were written by some member of the Edinburgh literary circle were songs gathered from the 'ordinary working people' of Scotland for example.