> Hi Richard, we are not discussing the Child Ballad at all here.

Sorry for bringing that in. That was mainly to clarify my own thinking: that the ballad and Cowdenknowes do get tangled in together but it might be better if that had never happened.

I agree with Martin that someone starting from the whole of The Lovely Northerne Lasse would be unlikely to abbreviate it to such an extreme extent. But it's a drastic abbreviation even if you start from the amount that was in Chappell. We don't seem much nearer to discovering who did that.