Rose·&·Briar belongs to many ballads, and many versions of Barbara Allen do not carry it. Harry Cox hated hearing it sung there. "That come in Lord Lovely. They get mixed up ... that shouldn't come in Barbara Ellen," he vehemently told Bob Thomson and me when we visited him in Nov 1970; "that don't belong in that. They belong in Lord Lovely."

Odd, because in other contexts he was quite well aware of the concept of variants. "Do you know that song?" he asked me after singing a fragment of The Ship Called 'Onward' - his version of The Amphytrite or Rounding The Horn. And on my saying I did, "Well, what's your tune for it then?"

~Michael~