> How early is Ramsay's earlier printing of it?

Child says it was first printed in vol. 4 of the 1740 edition, but I understand from Sigrid Rieuwerts's article that there is also a single copy in existence of a 1737 printing of vol. 4 alone -- so it looks as if the answer is actually 1737.

Indeed, if the Mansfield MS could be as late as 1785, there might not be much difference in date between it and Burns's version, published in the second volume of SMM in 1788. It is also almost word for word the same as Ramsay's, apart being printed in 5 stanzas of 8 lines instead of 10 of 4 lines and having "The earl of Cassilis' lady." as the last line instead of "A fair young wanton lady." It also has "sae compleat" rather than "sae very compleat" in stanza 1 and "we are a' put down" instead of "were" in the last stanza, and a few spelling differences. (I'm comparing it with the 1740 TTM scanned at archive.org.)

What about the Roxburghe ballad, Child G? Is there any way of saying whether the estimated date of 1720 is plausible?