Where does it come from?

In our local session book it comes from a few pages in front of "St. Ruth's Bush."

Excuse the attempt at a joke. All the print copies I've seen simply call it "trad," but the local books aren't big on historical accuracy.

It might be worth noting that what appears to be the more traditional (folk?) version is quite a bit different from the version favored by our local "Irish" players. The Irish version is a little "modal?"

There is also a third version favored by the local bluegrassers that's adapted to "very fast guitar play" by leaving out all the pretty notes and keeping only the beat. A few of our local fiddlers also seem to like this one, but probably only because they learned from the guitar player. (note: no insult to real bluegrass musicians intended - you know the kind I mean.)

The local "guitar" version is obviously a fairly recent corruption, but it would be interesting to know which of the other two (musical) versions came first.

John