I'd say "kind" is more likely, since it's a rhyme word for "mind", and the sense of the word as meaning goods is common enough. It even survives in the expression "payment in kind".

That note in the Ossian book reads to me as if whoever wrote it assumed that being in Herbert Hughes book Irish Country Songs in 1909 meant he must have collected it in the wild, whereas it appears likely enough that Hughes would have got it from Padraic Colum in the first place. Maybe if someone's got a copy of the book it might clarify things.

I'm always very doubtful about comments in song books and the back of record covers and that. The people writing them don't necessarily know any more about it than the rest of us.

It strikes me as likely that Padraic Colum wrote it, using traditional material in the process, which I imagine is how most songs in the tradition were created anyway; and it promptly went back into the tradition and got changed again in various ways.