Here's the note, taken from their web site, where the complete headnotes and texts to Dark Ships in the Forest are now available.

The Wife of Usher's Well (Child 79)

Scotland would seem to be the birthplace of this ballad, though, in common with many other of the ballads ennobled by their inclusion in the Child canon, it has flourished better on this side of the Atlantic, particularly in the Appalachians. Brandon lists two English variants; ours was transcribed by Ralph Vaughan Williams from a phonograph recording of a Mrs. Loveridge of Dilwyn. Not only do the children return from the dead, but we have the extra supernatural element, more proper to the religious piece "The Carnal and the Crane," of the roasted cock crowing in the serving platter.

When we released this as a CD, we decided to save a bit of money by posting the notes on the web, rather than printing an entirely new multi-page booklet insert. Cheap of us, I suppose, but we might not have been able to put it out so promptly without that saving. Grim fact of real life.

Sandy