'tutti flutti' has asked a very obscure question. He or she really ought to have told us what the unnamed recording he or she wants more information on actually was; it is always better to tell us what you already know rather than make us waste time in guessing, or finding out for ourselves what you could have told us at the start.

I assume that the recording in question is Harmonia Mundi HMC901983: The Elfin Knight: Ballads & Dances from Renaissance England, by Joel Frederiksen and Ensemble Phoenix Munich.

Are there no sleeve notes that might provide some indication as to where the text and tune were got? 'Anonymous' doesn't really cut it any more; we have a right to expect more than that from professional singers nowadays. Although they rarely seem to understand much about the background of the songs they sing, they presumably do at least know where they got them from.

Maybe I spoke too soon. Having found sound samples at Amazon, I find that Frederiksen sings 'Willy o' Winsbury' to the tune that Andy Irvine accidentally set to it back in the 1960s, but which had never been used for it before then. 'Renaissance England?' 'scrupulous musical and historical research?': oh dear.

Neither Richard nor Susan has guessed anywhere near the mark. So far as the original ballad is concerned, there appears to be only one candidate: 'A dolefull ditty, or sorowfull sonet of the Lord Darly, sometime king of Scots, neuew to the noble and worthy King Henry the eyght: Imprinted at London by Thomas Gosson dwelling in Paternoster Rowe, next to the signe of the Castell', c.1579.

As I've said, very obscure. I find only one reference to a (potentially) accessible printing: the late Bruce Olson indicated that it was reproduced in Carol R Livingston, British Broadside Ballads of the Sixteenth Century, 1991, plate V. The tune specified was 'Blacke and Yellowe'; although this was used for a few other songs of the period, its identity is, so far as I can tell, unknown. Later songs name the tune 'Lord Darley' (later still, 'Lord Derby') but Simpson doesn't mention it, and I don't know whether or not it survives. Given Frederiksen's grossly anachronistic use of the wrong tune for 'Willy o' Winsbury', there is every chance that the tune he used for this one didn't really belong to it either. More information would be welcome.