Jeff -- yes, Pete Wood does say that there were Irish boadsides, but unfortunately they don't seem to be in the Roud Broadside Index which is where I got my figures from.

The Poet's Box text is later, though as you say the date is illegible. I was only suggesting that they may have had some knowledge of local songwriters, even from thirty or forty years earlier.

I think that Pete Wood is mistaken in saying that the tune from the old Irish soldier was sent to Frank Kidson. The article in the Journal of the Folk Song Society is confusingly laid out but, although the notes on the song were written by Kidson, I think that in fact the song was sent by the collector, Mary Oulton, to Lucy Broadwood.

The Mainly Norfolk site mentioned above says that Mary Black learned the song from Steve Turner, who is quoted as having found the words in the John Rylands Library. That text doesn't seem to be online (nor is in the Roud Broadside Index), but it would be interesting to see. It doesn't say where Steve got the tune from but presumably it was the article in the Journal.