The song I am after, 'the old ways of the traveller are dyin'. I heard it once, . In the morning yer man had moved on. Its clearly a traditional travellers song. So were I to find the words written down, would I remember the melody he sung it to. ? To some extent.
I read music so I would hope to have the dots. So if I learnt it from the printed page, combined with my memory how would it go were I to meet him again and we sung it together?
Firstly I would merge with his singing. I would copy' phrasing, inflexion, and tone of voice, to blend in. So the version I sung before hand, would be the template, the ground upon which I would base my rendition. but its quite likely that there would be a number of different lyrics due to the different sources. I would of course ask him to tell me the words to write down. Of course a recording would be great, but that kind of thing was unavailable when I learnt many of my songs. it would be the words writ out and the melody remembered.

So come on !, anyone know the song? Its been bugging me the last , maybe 14yrs!

Some songs have missing verses, for some reason a verse is lost. Finding a missing verse is like gold dust to me, let alone a missing song.!