"Who made these songs?"
Nobody knows who made these songs and probably, we never shall
I was once accused by Steve of having a 'political agenda' for insisting that I believed that the 'ordinary people' made our folk song, in which case, I would suggest that the converse might be the case; if it is possible that working people could have made these songs, what possible motive could anybody have to insist they didn't, as some do ?
If they were able to - why didn't they ?

Most of our folk songs are full of 'working class' language', they reflect the experiences of working people in the language of working people, and they invariably take the side of those people against the unfairness and inequality of the times
Our poaching and transportation songs are obviously a result of the effects of the increasing hardships brought on by the enclosures which brought about the 'Poaching Wars which ran from 1760 to 1914
Why on earth should a town-based hack advocate on behalf of a poverty -stricken countryman who, in many cases, he despises, if his deriding, 'country bumpkin' songs are anything to go by ?
Real sailor songs stink of pitch and salt - not like the antiseptic drivel churned out in the hundreds by Dibden, or even the 'Jolly Jack Tar' patriotic nonsense to be found in Ashton's unreal 'Real Sailor' Songs'
Every type of folk song, from love songs to going to sea or war, or working at T' mill poverty raises a similar question mark
Of course it is possible, in fact, highly likely that the people who are depicted in the songs made those songs - they would have had to have been very backward not to have want to make them - expression in verse has always been a feature of human existence

We now know for certain that right up to the first part of the 20th century, Irish country people were making songs in their may thousands in every County in Ireland to reflect what was happening around them, shipwrecks, land wars, mass evictions, the struggle for independence, the organised cattle raids.....
Here in Clare we have songs on everything, from the schoolteachers who were pressurised by a local priest to marry because it was indecent for two unmarried people to work together, right through to the half-dozen songs about The West Clare Railway - all covered in songs
We were told by a local singer a few years ago, "If a man farted in church somebody made a song about it"
The pre-literate Travellers were still making songs on their lives in the 1970s when we first met them
Were the English working people so untalented and uncreative as to have to hire bad poets to do that on their behalf ?
What a sorry lot they must have been if that was the case

Why anybody should want to be so certain as some people appear to be that they didn't its totally beyond me - if I can be accused of having a political agenda, why shouldn't I counter by suggesting that those who would depict working people as creativeless might have a motive of their own
I haven't - yet, but I feel it coming on any day now !
Jim