Blimey, Jim, I hadn't realised that you were that much older than me! If you learned the old songbook tune, though, it will have been noticeably different from the Coppers' set. I put up a link to a midi of the original tune in at least one of the many earlier threads, but probably nobody will bother to look at them; so I'll add it here as well:

Rose of Allendale (original tune with piano accompaniment)

To address some earlier comments: the song's origins are not in doubt (see, as I suggested, earlier discussions, where more detail is provided). I don't believe that Martin Carthy ever recorded it, and I've never heard him sing it; though he may well have done at times, I doubt if he really figures in the equation here.

Peter Kennedy recorded the Coppers singing it at some point, but the best known recording from the family would be Bill Leader's, released as part of the A Song for Every Season double LP in 1971; with Charles Jefferys and S[idney] Nelson properly credited as writers.

I may as well note, while I'm here, that Dave and I cross-posted, so neither of us had seen the other's message. The original form of the song was popular for nearly a century, but had pretty much disappeared from popular song books by the time of the Second World War (perhaps Jim's teacher was using an old song book?) The Copper's form of words is very close to the great number of published texts from the C19 and early C20; but the modified melody they used is distinctly their own and I can't imagine anyone who has heard both mistaking it for Nelson's original, though of course the connection is very obvious.

Recordings exist of the great traditional singer Fred Jordan singing this, but it was one of the songs that he learned via the folk clubs rather than from the tradition; again, it's obviously the Coppers-adapted tune.

Jefferys (sometimes spelled Jeffries) and Nelson also wrote 'Mary of Argyle', another song frequently assumed (wrongly) to be Scottish. Nelson and Thomas Haynes Bayly were responsible for another song often found in oral currency, 'The Captain and His Whiskers'.