Regarding the question of whether Pardon believed his grandfather learned his songs from broadsheets:

Here are some extracts from a piece complied from transcripts interviews with WP from the MUSTRAD web site:

"My grandfather got the songs from broadsheets, apparently; that's how they were brought round, so they always told me."

"My uncle Billy, he said he remembered when a man-o'-war sunk off Ireland and someone composed a song about it, and two men come along here with one of those broadsheets and sung the song over to my grandfather. I don't know if he bought it, but I was told the words and music was ruled on it, and they charged a penny. That was how they got them into the villages. I asked Uncle Billy how it was that my grandfather managed to learn a hundred, 'cause that was very seldom he went out of the village - perhaps one day in the year to Norwich, or occasionally to North Walsham, and he said that was how they got round: by broadsheets. None of 'em got saved in the family; there was only one old song that I ever did find. The Transports [Van Diemen's Land] - wrote out by hand. I never dial see any of the broadsheets; they must have got destroyed somehow or other. A lot of the things that were my grandfather's have survived in this house though - that chair, and the grandfather clock, and that old Queen Anne table … "

It may be true that Jim Carroll for whatever reason did not record WP saying this, but for me it is clear that other people did. And I think it reasonable to believe that this is what WP believed to be the truth. I'm assuming Jim has never checked this material out?

The MUSTRAD site says that the quotations mainly come from interviews with Karl Dallas and Peter Bellamy. It also tells you where those interviews were published. I think some of them are available to listen to on the British Museum web site.

http://mustrad.org.uk/articles/pardon2.htm#cred

Thank you for reading