You are right, Brian. My being able to be specific about what Lloyd had done to "Reynardine" was not only more than an afternoon's work, it took lots of luck, too. I happened upon the Campbell rewrite in a book I chanced to find in a used bookshop in Seattle. Then I happened upon a recording Lloyd made of the song in about 1956, in another used bookshop in New York. It was when I realized that Lloyd's 1956 version was much shorter than the version he recorded ten years later, and that Shirley Collins had also sung the shorter version in the late 50s, and that the short version was entirely made up of verses from rewrites by Campbell and his friend Hughes, that I realized Lloyd had worked it over twice, and that the first time he had recourse to Campbell and Hughes.

That's where his claim about Tom Cook came in for scrutiny: when had he encountered Cook, how did Cook get a version that shared almost no lines with any traditional or broadside version, but only with Campbell's and Hughes's rewrites? It was years of work and good fortune to put all that together!

Thanks for your roundup of "First Person." I agree, they sound like pretty good ones. I do wonder about "Four Drunken maidens." In the Notes to English Drinking Songs, Lloyd is more specific about Four Drunken Maidens, stating that it was primarily spread in a chapbook known as Charming Phylis's Garland.

One thing about the Bodleian site: their search engine isn't very good. If you don't get the title exactly, you're likely to miss versions....

Oh, well, I'm off to have supper (I know you blokes do that, too...)