Probably a drift away from your question, but-
It is sometimes interesting (to me anyway) in what form the songs survive.
We recorded an old County Clare singer in London in the 80s.
We would record in the car (he was shy at singing at home as his family knew him only as a dancer, but had no idea he had the 80-odd songs he gave us).
After the session we would invariably reire to the pub, where he would spend the rest of the evening telling us 'yarns'; stories, usually bawdy, or jokes without punchlines. Among these were several narrative versions of songs, including 'The Bishop of Canterbury' about a bishop who met Cromwell on the road and was challenged, at the forfeit of his life, to answer three impossible questions.
One interesting rarety was the story of a fiddler and his wife on a sea voyage.
The ship's captain fancies the woman and bets the fiddler his ship and cargo against the fiddler's instrument that he can bed her.
The woman, having been told of the bet, goes to the captain's cabin followed by the fiddler, who, in whispers, encourages her to resist.
The story has two sung verses (roughly, from memory)

Hold on my love, Hold on my love,
For the space of half an hour,
If you hold out, I have no doubt
The ship and goods are ours.

and when the woman gives in:

I can't my love, I can't my love,
He has me by the middle.
He's big and strong and holds me long
And you have lost your fiddle.

These verses appear in similar form in a song called 'The Merchant and the Fiddler's Wife' in D'urfey's 'Pills to Purge Melancholy' (1719-20)
I can't find any reference of this surviving as a song and don't know the likelihood of it appearing as a broadside in the rural west of Ireland into the 19th century (Steve?), when it would have been taken up by the singer's source.
Sorry for the diversion
Jim Carroll