When I saw this thread I figured I could share the youtube playlists I made with several recordings of "The Unfortunate Lad/Soldier Cut Down" song family and a couple of lesser known variants of the "St. James Infirmary Blues/Gambler's Blues" here.

Here is my collection of Unfortunate Lad variants:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_oro_umJjk&list=PLVDpl8vHMkO9MAfPTkoJCjGpz4AQbX

And here are a couple of St. James Infirmary variants:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K1XZhsZITA&list=PLVDpl8vHMkO-8Z1KlgUXyzIkA3ihap

This should give interested people an overview of traditional variants of the broadside ballad. I have ignored the many sailor and cowboy variants for now, there are many, many recordings of those and a lot of redundancy, it would've made the list too long.

When I began looking for recordings of this song family I was hoping to find something that resembled Bert Lloyd's song, I did not know that he recreated it at the time.

Many of the American/Canadian "young girl" texts have strayed far from the broadside text. I wonder how they came to be.