""However, I would tend to agree with Bert Lloyd that the idea of a purely oral tradition stretching back over centuries is a non-starter.""
Utter nonsense
The first chapter of 'Folk Song in England' compares the oral tradition with the primitive practice of tribesmen telling their thoughts to inanimate objects such as trees (Bowra's suggestion also)
Bert makes a comparison between the ballad, 'Lady Isobel and the Elf Knight' and the medieval sword hanging in the Leningrad Museum which is illustrated with a knight displaying the heads of two women victims
He was always expressing his belief that these songs were many centuries od - and international
You really are main this up

I assume you hastily dipped into Wiki for your info on yet another new colection(to you) Carmina Gadelica
I suggest you look further -
Some academis to question what Carmichael did with it - others do not, but that was not why I put it up
Nobody has ever suggested that the contents came from 'the Scottish People' - as opposed to your theory that English people didn't (or couldn't) make their own songs
You are ducking and diving like a politician
Try working things out for yourself
Jim Carroll