Hi,

I had a break through on one of the related ballads: "Love is teasing", to read online: http://www.bluegrassmessengers.com/7k-love-is-teasing-love-is-pleasing.aspx

What has been known is the identifying stanza "Love is teasing, love is pleasing" has been found in the 1500s- translated:

[Hey trollie lollie, love is jolly,
A while, (a) while it is new,
When it is old, it grows full cold,
Woe befalls the love untrue.]

Also it's found in Waly, Waly and Jamie Douglas (Motherwell- Child J). Stanzas are found in Waly, Waly, and early related broadsides "Arthur's Seat," circa 1700 and the second, "The Unfortunate Swain," circa 1750. Stanzas are also borrowed from Died for Love (see Lucy Stewart's version).

What isn't know is: the standard UK versions also collected by Jean Ritchie from an Irish woman in the US are based on the broadside Wheel of Fortune.

Here are the four stanzas from Wheel of Fortune:

Wheel of Fortune

When I was young I was much beloved
By all the young men in the country;
When I was blooming all in my blossom,
A false young lover deceived me.

I did not think he was going to leave me,
Till the next morning when he came in;
Then he sat down and began a-talking,
Then all my sorrows did begin.

I left my father, I left my mother;
I left my sister and brothers too;
And all my friends and old aquaintance,
I left them all to go with you.

If I had known before I had courted,
That love had been so ill to win,
I wad locked my heart in a chest of gold,
And pon'd it with a silver pin.

To view online: http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/static/images/sheets/20000/19042.gif The last stanza is found similarly in Waly, Waly, and Arthur's Seat.
Wheel of Fortune (see also Christie) dates back to at least the early 1700s (1714-1740) when it was sung by bassist Richard Leveridge (1670-1758) at the Theatre Royal In Lincolns Inn Fields. Not all versions uses the stanzas but the ones collected in the early 1900s in the UK do (see also Jean Ritchie's Irish version).

Richie