"David Buchan in his 'The Ballad And The Folk' suggested that the ballads never had fixed texts but were remade on the spot by the singers, using the plot and established commonplaces."

As Jack Campin suggested, Buchan's theory doesn't find too many takers these days. However, it's interesting to note that when Frank Proffitt - a farm worker, carpenter and road mender in the mountains of North Carolina - sang a version of Child 68 that he'd heard as a boy to Frank and Anne Warner in 1959, he told them that "in trying to recall the way the song went, it is possible I use a rhyming word of my own here and there".

His 'Song of a Lost Hunter' is a version of 'Young Hunting' (prefaced by a lurid, necrophiliac 'backstory'), told in stanzas many of which differ significantly from other versions of the ballad found even in the same state. So it does seem as though Proffit recreated the ballad at least partly in his own words - although whether he did this "on the spot" when the collectors arrived is doubtful.