Well, Malcolm, I did write a few inches above your post the admission that "I had completely forgotten about 'Sweet Maggie Gordon' though I have a songster with the words in it." I wish I could remember everything from 8+ years ago and then forget some matters selectively.

I agree when you write, "It would seem most likely that the vaudeville collage of floating verses found its way to Nova Scotia." I agree with you about recent popular recordings of Peggy Gordon in Britain.

About Dennis Smith, I assume that he heard "Ingo" and "Spencervania" from his source. I just had a ramble through Webster's Geographical Dictionary and found no entry for either place in its many pages, which was my suspicion. That leads me to conclude they don't exist. I've done three market surveys in Nova Scotia as a geographer, and parts of those studies had specifically to do with the name recognition of places beyond the province. From the results, I'm sure beyond a reasonable doubt - if we are, in fact, talking about real places rather than imaginary ones - that "Ingo" in all likelihood was once England.

There is no other "...vania" in North America to match Pennsylvania in fame of course. In Deep Cove, Nova Scotia in 1979, Amby Thomas sang

If I had pen from Pennsylvania
If I had paper of truly white
If I had ink of the rosy morning
A true love's promise to you I'd write.

He said this about the song, "Once a new song would come out everybody would have it. You'd hear everybody singing it around home and at parties. There's a lot of it mixed up with another song. They put them words in it about Cape Breton. I have no idea who wrote it." One thing I get out of Mr. Thomas's statement is that Nova Scotia working folk could be pretty free-and-easy about details (e.g. place names) in newer lyric songs. Another is that Nova Scotians definitely "mixed up" songs.

What Dennis Smith meant by "Ingo" and "Spencervania" was those very words. This thread asks, "Peggy Gordon: where is Ingo?" Depending on how the question is perceived, the answer in all likelihood is either a) nowhere, or b) England.

All the best,
Dan Milner