Studied this song relentlessly and can say it's in a 'Csus' tuning. A whole step below D. One needs extra thick strings and a light touch to keep from buzzing. For my own purposes I play in a simple 'dropped D' tuning. One drops the low E string to D and leaves the rest of the guitar in standard.

Doing a 'travis style' pattern of going back and forth between the 6th and 4th string while playing the single note melody Chris' version sketches out works very nicely. Using 'double stops' to harmonize the melody works very nicely as well. Like 'breezy' my voice can handle the song in D. Our versions are probably pretty similar.

I've worked up a version on the mandolin as well. The fact that it's in D lends itself very well as one has the open D and A strings available. Have long wanted to try out my mandolin arrangement on an OM, but haven't been able to obtain one, yet.

Living rural in Tennessee, USA we're expeiencing very much the same sort of gentrification explored in the original work by Frank Mansell. I've reworked the lyrics to suit the local situation and 'southern expressions' while staying true to the spirit of the original. I'm always careful to express that this is an Americanized version of an Anglicized version of a Frank Mansell poem by Chris Wood. The Cotswold Ballads get pointed to as the collection of works from which the song was composed.