Of course it doesn't matter if you only want to sing a good story, but if you are seriously researching genuine ballads it's quite likely that this is one of the many fake ballads made up by collectors/antiquarians in the late 18th/early nineteenth centuries. Maidment gives no source for the ballad, and MacColl is hardly a reliable source. It could even be one of Peter Buchan's many concoctions. Maidment was closely connected with Peter.
It certainly doesn't ring true to me.
Steve,how do you define a genuine ballad?