Gardiner and RVW never worked together. What happened was that some tunes noted by Gardiner's collaborators (J F Guyer and, chiefly, Charles Gamblin) looked a bit odd to the editorial board of the Journal of the Folk-Song Society; so, before publishing them, they got Guyer and/or RVW to re-visit some of the singers and take down the tunes a second time. In some cases RVW worked from phonograph recordings, and it's a great shame that these don't seem to have survived.

When the songs were published, RVW's name was attached to those he had (re)noted. He wasn't the original "collector", and this was made clear in the introduction to the songs; but not everyone has read as carefully as they might have, and confusion has sometimes occurred. The "collector" credits in the original Penguin Book of English Folk Songs were as a result misleading in several places; I corrected that in the recent revision. The Roud Index simply quotes credits as given in the publication concerned.

As I understand it, Gamblin's notations -it was his which were mostly felt to be in need of double-checking- turned out to be accurate enough in the main. The singers tended to be elderly, and it's not surprising that their intonation was sometimes hard to be sure of. Gamblin's conscientious observation of this has perhaps resulted in an unfair reputation for inaccuracy.

As to the source of the song, I only spotted the earlier broadside myself yesterday, having failed (I ought to know better) to check for "plow" as well as "plough" last time I looked into it. I'm glad that Chris brought the subject up. Steve Gardham and I are working on a revised re-issue of Marrow Bones, which should be available in Spring 2007, and this is another step toward getting all the info we will need.

I might also mention that Coope, Boyes and Simpson recorded Mr Garman's set (with some textual modifications) on their recent cd Triple Echo. Well worth hearing.