""So this is another ballad that it is highly likely to have had its origins in the broadside press but passed into oral tradition"
With respect Shimrod, we have no idea whether the ballad was already circulating in the tradition before it appeared on broadside."

You're absolutely right, of course, Jim!

But the early broadside versions of 'Captain Ward' are long and clumsy (just like the early broadside versions of 'The Demon Lover')
whereas the oral versions are sleek and pared down and very expressive. We're then left with the possibility that oral material passed into print and back again into oral tradition. At each pass the 'hacks' of the broadside presses over-elaborated the material and it was down to the trad. singers to pare it back down again. Trouble is, as far as I can see, there is no way of proving or dis-proving such an hypothesis.

I have to say, though, that I don't think that it matters too much. Surely, as we have said so many times in this forum, it's not the origin of the material that's of consequence, it's the process that it's been through. After all if the only things that had survived were the broadsides of 'The Demon Lover' and 'Captain Ward' these would only be of interest to academics and antiquarians. It's what great artists like Marina Russell or Texas Gladden or James Carter did with them that excites our admiration today.