Malcolm, thanks for the info. Some interesting variants there, though the theme remains the same.

It is fairly old, and like many traditional songs is found under several different titles.

I appreciated that it was a traditional song, but the second part of your statement highlights a problem when searching for the words of a traditional song - that of varying titles.

I followed your link and among the many variants, I found that I had two in books on my bookshelf, if I had only realised it.