Richie, textual scholarship is a well established and rigorous (though not infallible) discipline. The standard texts we have today of Shakespeare all resulted from intense scrutiny, by many scholars of the two or three variant versions of most of the plays that were printed in the 17th century. The typesetting and proofing were mostly awful.

Even though Shakespeare and his contemporaries wrote an enormous amount with which disputed readings can be compared for plausibility, an occasional word is still uncertain, and unless something new is discovered, we have to be satisfied with that.

When you have to rely on gut feelings and personal preference, you're saying that there's no way to be sure, and it would be a mistake to claim anything more and list the possibilities.

That's especially true since *any* folksong text (or tune) may have been altered intentionally or otherwise by someone along the way.

My experience with broadsides is that some of them - possibly not 74, I'm just making a general observation - were so hastily written or carelessly printed that not even the original printing makes complete sense.

That leads to a very subtle editorial pitfall: the assumption that because your own reading makes better sense, or is more appealing or even more artistic, it must be the original. That is not necessarily so. You may have a better feel for words than did the broadside poet - or, as Jim might insist, his immediate source.