Steve and Reinhard

Thank you, that's helpful. Yes, Chappell printed the first two stanzas of the Lovely Northerne lasse from a seventeenth century broadside the Roxburghe collection (and Child printed the whole ballad).

I was very interested to hear how the Watersons researched their songs. The words of their version do indeed appear in the extract that Chappell printed, so that could well be where they got them from. And they sing it to the tune Chappell prints, which is from Playford (though I can't immediately see where he states that it is). However, there is no direct Yorkshire connection as Chappell doesn't print the fourth stanza, which is the one that mentions Danby Forest.

I can see that the Lovely Northerne lasse could be considered to be a song about Yorkshire on the grounds of the heroine's birthplace, but on the evidence so far it's not a Yorkshire song in the sense of having been collected in the county, or been known to have been sung there.

Martin