This song was a total surprise to me when I first heard Leadbelly recordings in the 1960s, as I grew up hearing English people of my parents generation singing it, along with 'Down at the Old Bull and Bush' and other such 'sing along' things. They are now in their 70s,80s and 90s, so it must have got over the water to here by the early 1950s at the very latest. Very nostalgic!