It's taken me a fair old while to read this thread and some of the other documents linked to.

To pick up on the question of whether the Price version was derived from Motherwell: surely the conclusive piece of evidence is the word "gurly", which as Heylin points out is not in either of the Motherwell versions but is in the Kinloch version (Child D). Even if Motherwell was (directly or indirectly) Price's main source, she got at least that one word from somewhere else.

BTW is Edward Ballinger Price a mistranscription of Edith Ballenger Price or was he a real person (presumably related) with another version?

BTW2 I tried searching for the Joe Rae version on the Tobar an Dualchais site and drew a blank. If it was there, it has disappeared.

Richard