For what it's worth (if there is any connection, it's pretty tenuous), the Montreal Family Herald and Weekly Star ran a regular feature, 'Old Favourites', from 1895 to 1968, and apparently published two folio anthologies (1898 and 1900), though under what titles I don't know. For more on the column and the songs it included, see Edith Fowke, "Old Favourites": A Selective Index in Canadian Journal for Traditional Music, 7, 1979.