For Q and anyone else interested:

THE CRAFTY FARMER'S DAUGHTER, as sung by Clive Woolf.
He still sings it, but this transcription is from his singing at Dingle's on 9th January 1974.

In Cheshire there lived a rich farmer.
To market his daughter would go.
Not thinking that any should harm her.
She'd been that way often before.

She was met by a ruffian robber.
That caused the young woman to stand.
"Your money and gold now deliver,
Or else your sweet life is at hand."

How he strippéd this fair damsel naked
And he gave her his bridle to hold,
Where she stood there a shivering and shaking,
Near starving* to death with the cold.

She put her left foot in the stirrup.
She mounted the horse like a man.
Over hedges and ditches she galloped,
Crying "Catch me bold rogue if you can."

That bold rogue he soon followed after,
Which caused him to puff and to blow.
Thank God that he never did catch her
Till she came to her father's own door.

"Oh daughter, dear daughter, what's happened?"
"Oh father, to you I will tell.
I was met by a ruffian robber.
Thank God he has done me no harm."

Put the grey mare into the stable
And spread the white sheet on the floor.
Well she stood there a-counting the money.
She counted five thousand or more.

*This usage of "starve" is consistent with this version being from Yorkshire, where it has the specific sense of dying, or being close to death, from cold rather than from hunger.

I must correct my statement about a 9/8 tune. It's four bars of 3/8 per line.

Richard