True, Richard, but a single corrupt text could have appeared in no time at all.

Somebody can hear a freshly made song, try to learn it, then get it jumbled in no time at all. (Learning a song while intoxicated would make this even easier; and "FC" is a long song telling a complex story.)

I'm not saying this is what happened here, only that corruption in a single text is not a reliable indicator of a song's age.

The existence of *several* independent corrupt texts from 1894 or earlier would be far more significant.

Without the recollections (from many years later, regrettably) that the song existed between 1883 and 1892, we'd have little enough basis for believing so.

"FC" may not predate 1894 by much.