Folksongs get the facts wrong as much as they get them right - that's what makes them important.
If I wanted to know how many men fought in the Battle of Trafalgar; who they were, where they came from - etc, I'd go to the Naval Records Office.
On the other hand, if I wanted to know what it felt like to be in the middle of a murderous sea battle, how a farmer who had been made drunk in order to get him to enlist was experiencing, what if felt like to be kidnapped from your home and family and put in an environment that was totally alien (a larg proportion of the sailors below decks in the navy had never seen the sea previously) - I'd go to the songs.
Quite often the facts were altered deliberately by the balladmakers as weapons (Haughs of Cromdale - Ballyshannon Lane).
As the man said "If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation"
Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun 1704.
Jim Carroll