Oh dear. Yes I must confess that I've done all this (and in some cases, more). We must've been among the first players on D&D in the UK, back in the days of the three books in the wood-effect box. Then we played most of the other games that came onto the market.

We certainly enjoyed 'Pendragon' a lot. I GM'd it for a long time and it has a very satisfactory mix of adventuring and slow but steady character development (including marriage, castle-building etc) that seems ideal for folkies, especially as it could include adventures that develop like the old ballads. I dom't know if it's still available though.

I even wrote a historical role-playing game based on the Royal Navy of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

Les