The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #57083   Message #3286184
Posted By: GUEST,SteveG
06-Jan-12 - 05:05 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Long Years Ago (from Shirley Collins)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Long Years Ago (from Shirley Collins)
This is laws K10 and several American oral versions are listed but no British ones. He also gives a reference to a De Marsan broadside (New York c1860) but no other broadsides. I certainly have no British ones. The song is older than the De Marsan broadside as there is a 7 stanza text in the Stevens-Douglass Ms of Western New York dated 1841-1856.

However a 5 stanza version is given without source and tune in the first vol of the Greig-Duncan Collection p39. It could quite easily have come across from America.