In "Marrow Bones, English Folk Songs from the Hammond and Gardiner Mss." EFDS Publications Ltd, 1965, there is a song called The Bold Fisherman, collected from George Roper, Charlton St. Mary, Dorset, in 1905. A woman out walking meets a fisherman who turns out to be a lord, rather like the gypsy stories. In the notes, (ed. Frank Purslow) it is suggested that the story refers to Christ fishing for souls, from the work of Lucy Broadwood and Anne Gilchrist comparing it with a medieval hymn. Which would make it allegorical, if the secularisation were to have intended to keep the meaning of the original.

Penny