"The Roud Index does have lots of North American entries. To restrict your searches to these, fill out what you want to search for, then click on '+ Add More Fields' and enter in the field text '(USA or Canada)' and chose in the field within 'Country'."

Thanks, I'll try those filters. When I just searched for "America" or "Canada" anywhere in the text I was getting lots of entries that said stuff like, "this song from originated in Yorkshire but was later adopted by cowboys in America"    I've had better luck referencing very specific places e.g., Halifax or Newfoundland New York.

But I don't understand why the British - with about 1/6 of the combined US+Canadian population seem to do such a better job cataloging folk than we do on my side of the pond.

Is there any good way to search Mudcat for songs with roots in specific places?