Plaese pardon my apparent grievous error....in addition to my degrees in Anthro and Archeology, I have an advanced degree in Linguistics and based on my past experiences, very few people, even within the dsiciplines, enjoy being lectured about cognate research, archival texts and fairly meaningless Linguistic L-serve arguments about origins of folksongs which prompted my question. Such discussions invariably are the result of some of the more SCA-minded folks, of which I am not. Obviously, I violated some "rule" that exists here.

I'd need permission from the other folks in the L-serve to post their ramblings and opinions as well as any writings that have not been published in academic forums. We had gotten into a fairly silly but fervent discussion of Renaissance music, the Riddle song came up along with the contention of an older date. Various texts were trotted out, none of which would be comprehensible or interesting to an average or above average audience.

I'll not bring anytthing like this up again. My apologies.

In all my experience of singing publically, which is not as much as others I am sure, and in my studies, I've not encountered more than two common melodies for the song. The one that goes with "I gave my love a cherry" that most people are familair with.... and the one associated with the lyrics commonly reffered to as "I have a young sister."

I can see that I've made some horrible Mudcat Etiquette misstep here to provoke such a response. Please excuse my error. It was not my intent to enrage people. However, it is not my style to respond to suggestions that I am an utter idiot just because I did not post a Doctoral thesis on the subject of my question. In order to refute the impication that I am an utter idiot, I'd need to post pages of scholarship that would not be of interest to very many. I get that I'm not supposed to open my mouth unless I can cite chapter and verse. i get it. As I said, it won't happen again. Forgive the transgression and the assumption that Mudcatters might share their preference for one melody or another. How stupid of me to even assume such a thing.