I remember once visiting Harry Cox with Bob Thomson. Looking thru some of his broadsides & MSS, we came across "The Ship Called Onward" [see my article describing this visit in Folk Review for February 1973]. Harry asked if I knew any song like that, so I sang a stanza of 'The Amphitryte' from the first Penguin Book of English Folk Song, remarking that the tune was like his version of 'Van Diemen's Land', which he called 'Henry Abbot he Poacher'; and when Harry looked a bit puzzled, Bob put in "Or like 'The Painful Plough'".

Bob said afterwards that he wasn't sure Harry thought particularly of his tunes, and that he quite possibly didn't recognise the tunes of any of them being similar, as eg here 'Henry Abbot' and 'Painful Plough'. I said to Bob that I wondered if that really was the case; and I continue to wonder so to this day.

~M~