That's a d@^n good question, Guest Gibb, and one somebody seems never to have asked.

Alan Lomax printed the song ("Blood Red Roses") in "Folk Songs of North America" (1960) with this fascinating note: "As sung by A.L. Lloyd and Paul Clayton, rarely published."

Lomax also says, without saying how he could know, "Heard among Negro crew on American ships in the 1820s."

Lloyd & MacColl also recorded it on their album "The Singing Sailor" released, I believe, not long after the movie.

A quick search of my shanty books and a look at Google suggests that "Go Down, You Blood-Red Roses," as commonly sung, was largely Lloyd's creation. I find nothing like it in the online catalogue of the James Madison Carpenter collection, and I do not recall seeing it in the manuscripts of Robert W. Gordon.

There is a possibility that he learned it from Hugill, but I don't know if the two were in contact in 1956.

It certainly may be that Lloyd got the song from Doerflinger and made the roses "blood-red" himself. And never mentioned it.

You know: like the king's wine in "Sir Patrick Spens."