To return to the original theme

Many of the songs which were collected in the early 1900's are also known from broadsides printed in the 1800's or earlier. In some cases, this may be due to the broadside printing a 'traditional' song, but in many others, the author of the original is know, and MUST have been the source for the oral version.

See, for example, My Johnny was a Shoemaker. Composed c1859 by an American writer, and sung in the 1860's on a concert tour in Europe by his wife, later collected twice in England.

Likewise Tannahill's 'Braes o' Balquither' which resurfaced as Wild Mountain Thyme.