At the time Child was doing his research, "folksong scholarship" was virtually nonexistent except as an antiquarian hobby. In the Romantic era, it seemed unnecessary, even undesirable, to many editors and collectors too document folksong sources very carefully.

Their assumption was that the songs were mainly ancient and untraceable, and they tended to assume also that they were mostly very widely known. So wny bother identifying a text with a particular place? The existence of variants also discouraged attention to details of provenance. Why be specific when words and tunes were constantly changing?

Baring-Gould may have been the first collector to carefully and regularly note the names and dwelling-places of singers. But that wasn't until the 1880s, and Child had begun his work in the '50s.

Unfortunately, Baring-Gould also rewrote any and all verses that he found even mildly "indecent." Fortunately, most of his original manuscripts survive. I don't believe Child had access to any of them.