Thanks much for that, Snuffy, I think you've nailed it. I've not gotten the FolkTrax CD yet (I'm stone broke right now!), but hopefully someone else can chime in who's heard it. However, I've just now checked the liner notes of the Foc'sle Singers, which they learned it "from a BBC recording." Surely that was Slade's 1950 recording. (It burns me, tho, that they don't come out and name Slade or whoever specifically. It only perpetuates, to my mind, the sort of vague, anonymous agency that gives the illusion that all songs are the "common knowledge")

Peter Bellamy's is a different story, I suppose.

Earlier as well, Lighter raised the issue of some of Slade's recordings maybe not being from personal experience but from published-source interpretation. The plot would thicken a bit if so...!