2998)  ROSE OF BRITAIN'S ISLE  The DT file names no source, but the text given is nearly identical to the one in Edith Fowke's Sea Songs and Ballads from Nineteenth Century Nova Scotia (1981), and may perhaps derive from that book, with one or two words mis-remembered.  Fowke commented:

"Although at least four different broadside printers issued this ballad in England, it does not seem to have survived in British tradition, nor has it been reported in the United States.  However, it has been quite popular in Canada, turning up in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Ontario.  The text here is one stanza longer than any of the traditional versions I have seen.  It is remarkably close to the texts given by Creighton and Manny except that they lack the seventh stanza."

The Fowke text came from Fenwick Hatt's notebook of sea ballads, made around the 1880s.  Helen Creighton gives a set in her Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia (1932), which was noted from Mr. Ben Henneberry of Devil's Island c.1929.  This is probably as close as we are likely to get to a tune for the DT example, though, as ever, I stress that we can't know whether or not that text was ever sung to this tune or one like it.  Midi made from the Creighton example.