In reply to Richard, when I said I'd been told about Jeannie singing Jean Ritchie's tune, there is probably no-one left who could confirm this as Jeannie, her daughter Lizzie, Hamish Henderson (who 'discovered' Jeannie) and Norman Buchan are now all dead. However, when the holiday period is over I will check with a good friend and fellow ballad singer Andy Hunter, who was 'adopted' into Jeannie's family when a student at university in Aberdeen and who learned many songs from her. Indeed, Andy is the source of the following quote from James Porter's book (p77)

"She had two tunes for 'Little Matty Groves' -- a big one and a short, thumpy one. Once at a festival when someone requested her to sing 'Matty' at the opening of the programme before she was warmed up, she said to us under her breath, "Dammit, I'll no' start off with my big tune first an' be here five minutes longer!" So she sang the short one first. That's how she built up a programme to a climax. The big guns came last when she was all warmed up and the audience completely with her, expectant."

Further, when I said that it was sung as a Scottish version I was possibly not expressing myself clearly -- what I meant was that no-one in the audience would have imagined it as anything other than of Scottish origin as it was sung with such commitment.

Finally, Richard also said that Jeannie sang ballads slowly, but you might be interested to know that there was a study (I think by Ailie Munro, author of "The Folk Music Revival in Scotland") of various recordings of Jeannie over a long period, where she sang the same ballads. And as she got older, she sang them slower, possibly because of age but more likely because she had invested them with such importance as a result of scholarly interest and audience response.

Absolutely last word -- I was once in a folk club audience in Glasgow when Jeannie was the guest. She was singing a ballad (might have been 'The Gypsy Laddie') and as she sang, she engaged individual members of the audience and delivered two or three verses directly to them so compellingly that it was impossible to break eye contact -- a magical experience!