Nice one Mick!!

I've got the other two versions on my site from the 1860's and also the first (McGee McGar [sic]) songbook version from 1909.

I'll post at some point.

First I'd like to point out that the DT's "Two Ravens"-

THE TWO RAVENS- From Mountain Minstrelsy of Pennsylvania, Shoemaker 1931 Long popular in Clinton County, One of Clarence Walton's favorites.

and the recent post:

The Legendary Ballads of England and Scotland compiled & edited by John S. Roberts, Chandos Classics 1900

is by Allan Cunningham, 1925.

It was written by Cunningham based on the extant versions and is not traditional.

Interestingly- there's already a first version collected of Cunningham's Scottish ballad in the US by Mellinger Henry, his A version, c. 1900. After Cunningham's Two Crows was published in Cleveland's Compendium (Philadephia, 1848, with subsequent editions reprinted in 1859 etc.) it began surfacing as a traditional ballad, but it was learned from this book- directly or second hand. The orginal, from Allan Cunningham, was printed in 1825 in Cunningham's Songs of Scotland, Vol. I, pp. 289-290. Cunningham rewrote Scott's (See Twa Corbies- Child A a.) and Ravenscroft's text (See Child A Three Ravens). Here's Cunningham's original:


THE TWO RAVENS [1] Cunningham 1825

There were two ravens sat on a tree
Large and black as black might be;
And one unto the other gan say,
Where shall we go and dine to-day?
Shall we go dine by the wild salt sea?
Shall we go dine 'neath the greenwood tree?

As I sat on the deep sea sand,
I saw a fair ship nigh at land,
I waved my wings, I bent my beak,
The ship sunk, and I heard a shriek;
There lie the sailors, one, two, three,
I shall dine by the wild salt sea.

Come, I will show ye a sweeter sight,
A lonesome glen, and a new-slain knight;
His blood yet on the grass is hot,
His sword half-drawn, his shafts unshot,
And no one kens that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair.

His hound is to the hunting gane,
His hawk to fetch the wild fowl hame,
His lady's away with another mate,
So we shall make our dinner sweet;
Our dinner's sure, our feasting free,
Come, and dine by the greenwood tree.

Ye shall sit on his white hause-bane,[2]
I will pike out his bony blue e'en;
Ye'll take a tress of his yellow hair,
To theak yere nest when it grows bare;
The gowden[3] down on his young chin
Will do to rowe my young ones in.

O, cauld and bare will his bed be,
When winter storms sing in the tree;
At his head a turf, at his feet a stone,
He will sleep, nor hear the maiden's moan:
O'er his white bones the birds shall fly,
The wild deer bound and the foxes cry.

Footnotes:
1 One of the most poetical and picturesque ballads existing.
2. The neck-bone — a phrase for the neck.
3. Golden.