Brian, I think you're right about Thomas Moran's song belonging to Child 21 rather than 20, but as you say the refrain hints at some sort of transitional version. I'd love to hear his complete song.

In the notes to the Folktrax record Seamus Ennis is quoted as saying:-
"Thomas Moran's songs came to Leitrim in Cromwellian times - the Plantation period" which perhaps suggests a Scottish ancestry for his songs.

'The Cruel Mother' only had one lover in all the versions I've seen, and generally the songs credit her with giving birth to two pretty babes at one birth, or occasionally only one or more rarely, three. Whereas the "maid" in Child 21 has clearly had multiple lovers and as many children - as much as fifty or seventy in some Central European variants. There is probably some significance in the different ways the children are buried which could be worth looking at again.

Matthew Edwards