Ted Anthony's book is now available.

Aside from the flowery bullshit that crops up occasionally, a la Greil Marcus, it is a *great* book. I'm especially impressed that he tracked down just about everybody, or their relatives, if they were dead, who ever had anything significant to do with this song. This is really a *people* book. I'm further impressed by the fact that, while it gives folk tradition its due, the text is not circumscribed by artifical notions of what constitutes the tradition of the song. It follows HORS wherever it goes.