Going all the way back to the beginning of this thread and Sandy's August, 1999 entry about the Child ballads in Niles' BALLAD BOOK, I am curious as to whether there is any record of anybody who ever tried to actually go out and find any of Niles "sources" to see if they existed, were still alive, or had living relatives. He does mention a lot of names and actual places in his book. I realize that the dates are pretty early for any actual survivors now, but what about descendents?

It's always struck me as too bad that there is no way to sort the wheat from the chaff with regard to all of those ballads in his book. They do tend to be unique in both tune and text when compared to other collected versions, so that route is not very helpful. I just wonder if anybody ever bothered to track down any of his "informants" and if they did whether they ever wrote up anything about that. I'm a great believer in checking out the footnotes and have discovered many wondrous things that way - or complete lack thereof - in some amazing places. T.O.M.