Hi Henry

The article you refer to (which is here) concludes that the Tom Pearse that the article is writing about could not have been the same Tom Pearse who is referred to in the song.

Hi Steve

The same tradition that has Tom Cobley et al going to the fair at the beginning of the 19th century or a little earlier has them all coming from the villages of Stickleback and Spreyton - and as far as I can tell there were no other fairs within riding distance of those villages before Widecombe Fair started up.

I take the point that the Devon version of the song may have derived from one of the other versions, but it still seems odd to me that there is a strong tradition in Devon that the Devon version of the song referred to real people who lived in Stickleback and Spreyton, but who lived there about 50 years before there was any fair within riding distance of those villages.

I'm starting to think that that tradition probably arose because Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, who collected the Devon version, wrote in his book that the song was about real people who lived in Stickleback and Spreyton - probably because that's what he was told by whoever he collected it from. I'm not sure why it's thought that the version he collected dates from the beginning of the 19th century, other than the fact that there was a real Tom Cobley living in Spreyton around that time. But there was no fair nearby at that time, so that tradition still makes no sense to me.

Dave