Very interesting, Tony.

So has even a fragment of "The Maid and the Palmer" been collected in the United States? Maybe, maybe not.

Whether Niles's fragment is real, or partially real, or not, or whether the ballad was ever sung traditionally in America by anyone ever is less interesting to me than its simple existence. Whatever its origin, it's part of, or a somewhat enigmatic footnote to, the song's history.

Taken by itself without historical context, it's kind of creepy and inexplicable.

It seems odd that if Niles had concocted it, he wouldn't also have concocted a tune.

If authentic, the three little stanzas seem less like a "fragment" and more like somebody's attempt to reconstruct and refashion dimly recalled material.

If, on the other hand, Niles himself is responsible, he certainly created a memorably weird little rhyme. It might not be out of place in a freshman poetry anthology, attributed to "author uncertain."