I find this a very interesting thread from the academic point of view (All right, so I'm a folk anorak!) Clearly there is a vehicle there for bringing in bits of all sorts of songs in what I call the mock rustic tradition, such as Buttercup Joe, The Turmut Hoer, Dinah show us your leg, and so on. Clearly also people put in their own local county as the venue. I wonder if there's a common origin of this ditty. It's not one that collectors until recently would have wanted to note, but on the other hand it is obviously living tradition. Crude, certainly, but if you study surgery you don't leave out the body parts you don't fancy and similarly if you study folklore you don't ignore a song just because it doesn't appeal to you or fit into preconceived ideas of what folksong is.

So can anyone point to an earliest version, either of the Blackbird bit or the Be I ....shire bit. Interesting to know.

Gwilym