Thank you to everyone who has responded but I'm afraid none of this takes me any further than I had already gone with my own research. There are indeed a number of broadsides of this song and the answer song printed in the second half of 19th Century but I am doubtful that this is the start of the story. Doubtful but not definitely dismissive. Is the song a victorian music hall song "in the folk style" or was that just when the old song got comitted to paper? Are we all agreed there is no river Dundee? The anonymous guest joke attreibuted to Steve Roud was actually written by Abby Sale in a thread all about fakelore, by the way
|