when I was a kid we used to sing that one in Singing together which was a radio prog we all listened to in primary school. everybody sat in desks with a little book from the BBC singing High Germany, Billy Barlow, the Keel Row etc. Piano accompaniment and toffs singing the songs of american Slaves, Geordie miners, jamaican fishermen in strained RP accents - but it gave us the tune.

we learned a lot of folksongs that way. Of course today folk songs aren't part of the national curriculum - except tangentially. Government in the 1950's were more aware that we had a culture worth hanging onto. Perhaps because we came within an ace of losing it if we had lost the war.

As I remember MacColl figured in some of the arrangements. The same sort of idealism that gave us the Radio ballads.