The tune is certainly British or Irish, and sounds familiar; though I can't place it at the moment. It does sound like a broadside song, yes. Does anybody know what Randolph says about it? It'll be a while before I can get to a library copy, and there are people round here who have the books already.

Expert? Too soon to be one of those. I might catch up with Bruce Olson if I live as long as he did, but I rather doubt it. It's a good target to aim for, though.

So much of this kind of thing depends on having access to the right tools and resources, and more become available all the time. Nowadays we can find things in minutes that might have taken years to locate not so long ago. Still have to find, and buy, obscure books and read them, but there are some good shortcuts, and they can easily make us seem to know more of ourselves than we really do.

Steve Roud's Folk Song and Broadside indexes are far and away the most important finding aids for students of folk song. At the moment they are only available by subscription or through academic institutions, but will eventually be put on the web in some form or other. That's not likely to be soon, as there are a fair few technical issues to consider, and the database is constantly being added to (such things are, by definition, never finished). The current project involves adding detailed and consistent subject/descriptive categories.