An example of a fairly easily tracked case of adoption, adaptation and recirculation of a song is the well-known 'Sam Hall' covered in God knows how many threads in this forum. The new, highly dramatised version created by the supper room singer Ross in 1848/9, became for a while a sort of 'authorised' edition, but it had traceable antecedents and it has continued to appear with many variations since then.

The most you can say about the version of 'Sam Hall' that you have just heard sung is that it was current on the day you heard it, it belongs to an identifiable family of songs and this or that verse or turn of phrase crops up in a previously collected or printed version. It can be dated to the late 1840s only in the sense that we know it was remade and enjoyed particular popularity at that time. And even so broad a statement needs to be hedged about. We know a fair bit about Ross's manner and style of delivery and the effect that he had on audiences, but no one – not even the authors of later literary reminiscences - actually had the courage to publish in complete and unexpurgated form the words that he sang