Apparently Burns based his text on the Herd's 1776 "lass of lochroyan." (Per JC Dick's "The Songs of...Burns.") This is maybe the first proper ballad I ever learned; from MacColl's 1956 Riverside E&SPB. I still sing it. Love it. MacColl was surprisingly true to actually printed/collected texts. I have several times located (nearly) identical texts that I'd been pretty sure he'd "improved" significantly. OTOH, I still suspect all the tunes he came up with that he reported from a single source that happened to be his deceased mother. Hardish to check.
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