Hi,

Consider the first of the two Irish stanza sung by a Dublin madwoman in "Women, Or, Pour Et Contre: A Tale" - page 26 by Charles Robert Maturin - 1818:

The woman loitered some time after the rest, and with the inconsistency of madness, was singing a fragment of an Irish ballad evidently of monkish composition, and of which the air has all the monotonous melancholy of the chaunt of the cloister:—

“Oh, I wish you were along with me,
Said the false knight, as he rode;
And our Lord in company,
Said the child, and he stood.”

“Where's the next,” she muttered; “ay —gone far off, like all I remembered once —far off.”

“Oh, I wish you were in yonder well,
Said the false knight, as he rode;
And you in the pit of hell,
Said the child, and he stood.”

And her voice died away in indistinct mutterings.

    with this stanza from Ulster Folklife, 1955:

In fact, the traditions so overlap and intertwine that it's impossible to dogmatize about the origins of some songs either in words or in music. But here is a Scots Ballad which, although it must be over two hundred years in these parts, is still sung to the air of The Uist Tramping Song:

“What brings you here so late?” said the Knight on the road:
“I go to meet my God,” said the Child as he stood,
And he stood and he stood and 'twere well he stood;
“I go to meet my God,” said the Child as he stood.

Richie