Thanks again to all of you and to mudcat for this great conversation.

Here is what I can add. Early ballads were also published as broadsheets or as uncut booklets (basically a folded broadsheets). As I recall, these were published in the 17th-19th century's and were cheap and accessible. All classes could afford them. They generally had pictures and were sometimes used as wall coverings, or for less pure uses in the Loo after they were read.   Often a printer would change just a bit of the song and republish the song with a new name, so that they could sell another "different" song. I can't imagine that some of this material did not get out to rural Ireland.

On a philosophical level, where does that put our traditional songs, which many consider more pure than the driven snow, and certainly untainted by the music hall or broadsheet world. I can imagine a broadsheet finding its way to a nook of Ireland, changing over the years through faulty memory or intentional "improvements", then a tune change because it sounds so much nicer with that "jig" learned in child hood, and there you go.... voila.... a traditional song.

As a singer, I seek out traditional material, and I have to admit that I would find it dissappointing to find out that the person I have been identifying with in the song, was a figment of a London printer's imagination. However, all those people that preserved the songs, through singing them generation after generation are part of the song too, and it must have struck a chord with them. That is good enough for me.

Claire