Thanks for the interesting posts. I enjoy seeing these old songs, even if they are not strictly on topic.

Bob Coltman, I agree with you that jennifer probably evolved from juniper. A pleasant deduction!

Re: "That's not to say that there may not at some point have been some significance to "herbal" refrains in some contexts; but we don't actually know that..."   I suppose if someone found a manuscript in Geoffrey Chaucer's handwriting discussing the topic at length, then we would "know that." But I don't think that's going to happen.

Re: The refrain "Oh, the rose and the linsey, o" in "Cruel Mother," I suspect that "linsey" is a corruption of "lily." The rose and the lily were associated with the Virgin Mary. (I remember hearing that a lily was any large, fancy flower, not "lily" in the narrower sense that we use it today.)