Mary, your comment Child's collection cites very few tunes that were associated with the ballads. is true but the majority of them have known tunes that were available to Child had he been interested. (See the brand new Child from Loomis House.) Further, most have known tunes as recorded in Bronson (ie, 209 of the 305 ballads). There are a very few more with tunes found since Bronson.

Maybe 180 Child ballads have been recorded.

Analee, I agree with the above folk about just going ahead and writing your own tune. You could be honest and admit it when you sing or you could claim you found it in a library or learned it from your Scottish mother. Many have done just that.

Another good choice might be to set tunes to those Child ballads with no known tune. This might be a great public service. Such people as Ray Fisher (for "Willie's Lady") and Morris Blythman (for "Twa Corbies") have won great acclaim for just this and they didn't even write the tunes, themselves.

I'll send you the Child numbers, if you like. They're burried in some thread here at Mudcat as well.