Keith, calm down.

"The version of the ballad is from John Bell's "Rhymes of The Northern Bards", 1812. The tune is common in Tynedale and Redesdale, ...has been seized upon and used by "patterers" and "street singers" ... has nearly passed... into oblivion".

Apart from the self- contradiction (it's common, but in oblivion), to me that rather makes it clear that he was "improving" what he saw as a corrupt traditional version. In 1812 (or at any time up to the 1920s) it was taken for granted that such improvement (plus bowdlerisation in some cases) was necessary to recover the "true" song from the corruptions of the folk process. Just look at Scott et al.

I'm pretty sure the Dransfields sang "sighing and troubled", which sounds both less melodramatic than sobbing, and less... sickly... than sickly.