I hadn't known, though I suppose I should have, that this ballad had been recorded. I've heard it precisely once, when a girl friend from my college days sang me a verse and a chorus, all she remembered from the version her grandmother had taught her when she was little.

I have always assumed that the song concerned Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, a notorious guerrilla band in the Revolutionary War. Apparently there's another set of lyrics evoking rowdies from this or another era,