Mulling (for the thousandth time) over the incongruity of 'Shady Grove' which is nothing about trees protecting the singer from the sun, but seems to be a woman's name, it occurred to me in a flash of insight, that of course it must have started as a song about a Woman or girl named "Sadie" with the surname "Grove", ie, "Sadie Grove", and was corrupted by the usual vagaries of oral transmission, etc, etc.   Searching this forum and the web generally provides no support for this conjecture, however.