Thanks for that additional information. Important as Davenson's work was, we might wish that he had provided rather more in the way of source information. The version critique is something that we've also suffered from in English-language folksong studies, from the days of the first antiquarian ballad editors, but there has been a greater tendency here, perhaps, to move beyond the "epitomising" of texts and to seek to present something more like what was actually sung; though there has still been a lot of unacknowledged editorial mediation even recently.

The mediated form of La Blanche Biche certainly ends on a very dramatic note, but the final lines you quote are more in keeping with traditional structures, and it's good to be made aware of them.