"Twist as much as you like, Jim, but the facts remain. And the opinions."
The fact remains that we haven't a clue who made our folk songs and we probably never shall
You choose not to dispute my pointing out that not only have you attempted to claim as 'truth' that historical equivalents of today's tabloid press made them rather than the people they have always represented and have been assumed were the makers, but you have extended that claim to folk tales
Fine by me - that's a pretty strong confirmation that this is your view of the creative abilities of the rural poor - non existent both on the song and story-making front
We slug it out o that basis now we know where we stand

I choose to believe that there is enough evidence that to show that the songs were maade by land and factory workers, sailors, soldiers, transportees, recruits for wars, victims of millennia of Enclosures, forced marriages.... all covered to one degree ot another by songs that were once considered so important by those who sang them to be claimed as their own

It's often that while literacy may have been a factor, possibly in the decline of our song traditions, recreational literacy was a late-comer on the scene -
The oral learning and transmission of our songs has been recorded as existing among 'the common people' far back as the early 700s - one thousand, three hundred years ago
As I said, unless you are prepared to claim that 'ordinary' people were incapable of having made our folk songs, you have no possible grounds for claiming that they didn't - if they didn't, why didn't they - the Irish and the Scots were busy making songs for the last few centuries, at least, - why where the English so backward in coming forward on the creative front ?

I don't think you'll find too much "twisting" in that - I await your response
Jim