It was Jim's Italian organ grinders which set me off on that topic.

Sadly, Cox's song isn't on Spotify.

I can't speak about Ireland, but I think it may be a misconception to imagine some sort of Olde Englande in which people roved round singing songs for their supper. Starting in Elizabethan times, you needed paperwork officially to move area, so that they could send you back to where you were born if you were poor, and so on. This went on surprisingly late: we think one of my ancestors might have got sent back where he came from when he turned up in another Parish without means to support himself. This was 19th century.