Yesterday I had a quick look at the sets of tunes in Bronson for these two songs. The Johnny Cock tunes are all in duple time. The Lord Lovel tunes are mostly in 6/8 (including the earliest ca 1840 and Sam Cowell's tune). There are however a small group (mostly US, but one from Lincolnshire collected by Grainger) of Lord Lovel's in 4/4.

I would hazard a guess that the 6/8 tunes may stem from the lighter side of the tradition - jigs being generally more sprightly and suitable from less serious songs. The reference to the Johnny Cocklesmuir tune for Lord Lovel and the fact that Johnny Cock has only been collected in 4/4 may mean that Lovel was originally more generally sung to a more serious 4/4 tune. This is purely speculative of course. When I've got a bit more time I'll go through the tunes more closely (there are a lot of them!).

Susan - I'm not sure if I've got an ethical disposition! I do have a scientific one though (it's that maths training) and that probably leans more in Steve's direction. It's like the Venerable Bede's story of the sparrow flying through a hall in Winter. He says something along the lines of the life of man is like the sparrow flying through the hall, we know what happens as it flies through, but what of happened before or after he flies through we have no knowledge. My scientific disposition says that we can only say definitely something about the ballad where we have evidence for it. We can speculate (as I did above about the tunes), but without evidence to back it up we can't say anything definite. (My statistical background also suggest that some things are more likely than others: Lord Lovel may have sprung fully formed into life in 1760 because it was brought to earth by aliens, but the balance of probability suggests that is not likely). What I do ethically believe is that we can discuss things without getting into a personal fight - dispute the facts and opinions but not the person making them.

Mick