At the risk of drifting away from the original matter of this thread, I offer the following note on the song 'Dear Tom This Brown Jug' given above by Q from a Bodleian broadside..

This appears in a late eighteenth century songster as 'Dear sir, this brown jug' with the lady named as Kate of the Vale, rather than the more usual Nan of the Vale. The source is given as "the comic opera of 'The Poor Soldier'".

Eric Walter White's 'First Performancesof English Operas' lists 'The Shamrock or the Anniversary of St Patrick', 1783, by W Shield and John O'Keeffe, revived later in the year as 'The Poor Soldier' . The same opera included 'How happy the soldier who lives on his pay'.

Like 'A Flaxen Headed Cow Boy','The Captain with his Whiskers' and many other songs found in oral traidition, this one seems to have passed through, if it did not actually originate in, the theatre.