Q, one thing to be clear about: The Mountains of Pomeroy is a later song, written with the original Reynardine in mind and maintaining the name for the central character. It uses only two lines from the original song, however: "your life they would destroy" and "with my gun I'll guard you." So it's a very different song, and I treat it as such in the paper.

If anything, the existence of this song lends credence to my belief that the "original" understanding of Reynardine among regular folks was that he was an outlaw, since the person who re-worked it, George Sigerson, put his Renardine in that role. But there's no proof either way.

When writing this paper, I was very aware of the loss of my mentor, Kenny Goldstein, who passed away in 1995. Kenny was the producer of the A.L. Lloyd album on which the earlier version of Reynardine was recorded--the one that tipped me off that the Tom Cook story was unlikely. He also was a collector of the Forget Me Not Songster, and had at least one of every edition when he died. I had to go to the rare book room at the library to see a copy of it; when Kenny was alive I would have gone to his top story book room in West Philadelphia and gotten a better selection!