To get back to the Blacksmith tune: a quick click through some previous threads has sorted this out better in my head now.

The tune that Shirley Collins sings is in a major key, and was based on a version of "Our Captain Calls" collected from Phoebe Smith in Suffolk. The hymn tune is very close to this. The one collected in Sussex is a minor key version of The Blacksmith, similar to the one used by Steeleye Span. The two tunes are related.

The relevance of all this to the original topic is that the folk tune definitely came first, but it has only been used as a hymn tune for about 100 years, since VW adopted it for "To Be a Pilgrim".

Marje