A transcription from Chris Foster's recording was posted here nearly six years ago; there is a link to it at the top of this thread. Where I heard "Rover", 'Guru' hears "Roper": either may be what Foster sang, but "thorns" above is wrong. The word is "horns".

The earlier thread also contains a link to a broadside edition; the place-name is left blank for the singer to insert an appropriate locality.

To expand on Jim Carroll's earlier comments, 'The Ranter Parson' seems only to have been found once in tradition; Ralph Vaughan Williams noted it from a Mr Earle, a labourer aged 61, at Leith Hill Place, Surrey, in September or October 1904. Mr Earle had learned most of his songs "off ballets'" (songsheets) or from his father. RVW recorded only the first verse and tune. The song, augmented from a broadside printed by T Ford, Irongate, Chesterfield, appears in Roy Palmer, Bushes and Briars: Folk Songs collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams (Lampeter: Llanerch, 1999, 138-9). Palmer notes that the 9/8 tune is a form of 'The Rant,' a tune widely used in ballad-operas.

Whether Foster was aware of the example from tradition (Roud 2530) I don't know, and I can't play my vinyl copy at present to compare the melodies. Likely enough he just set an appropriate tune to a broadside text.