Date: 22 Mar 22 - 06:33 PM
Thanks for that link, Tony. I have read it through and my own studies throw up a lot in common with her conclusions. Some wonderful detail, and all this only got a Masters? I've seen Doctorates with less substance.
There is still a lot of missing information as with most studies like this. It should hopefully provoke further study. It would be useful for instance to have all of the Irish versions together and analyse what they collectively contain. They are almost a pastiche of earlier versions and smack to me as having been made by some hedge poet with a rough memory of an earlier version.
She dates A to c1600 as do I and as part of the scribal tradition may have been copied and recopied for some time but that doesn't take it back in that ballad form to the medieval period, which she suggests.