I had always thought that the Dransfields got it from Dave Hillery, formerly of York (or Ripon), living in Manchester when the Dransfields' LP came out and now in Durham. He sang a lot of Yorkshire songs, some he collected himself. I remember him well as a resident at Harry Boardman's folk club in Failsworth and then Manchester in the early 70s. He and Harry made an LP together for Topic, Trans-Pennine, and the notes there to Scarborough Sands state:

"Some years ago Dave Hillery came across 'Scarborough Sands' in Holroyd's Collection of Yorkshire Ballads (1892). He adapted this tune to the words and sang it regularly around the York area. Astonishingly (or perhaps predictably) the song has since cropped up all over the place with the tune described as traditional and Scarborough replaced by bamburgh, Salisbury Plain and even Liverpool."

Derek Schofield