Thanks for that update on the Tobar An Duchlais site.

As I look at this discussion I am struck by how much information we have and by how little we actually know about the history of this ballad in the Northeast. We still are unable to push anything back in time on the American side of the Atlantic prior to the printing of the broadside in 1858, and yet we also know that the broadside was probably "lifted" from one or more strands of oral tradition. It seems much more "Americanized" than British. We also know that "oral traditions" get written down by others besides broadside publishers, because we have that hand-written copy by Sarah Willard from 1869. There were probably hand-written copies prior to the broadside as well. It is all very tantalizing in a somewhat frustrating kind of way!