"The Cottage in the Wood

I have always thought of The Cottage in the Wood as being a fragment which, if taken one way was The Laird of the Windy Wa (Cold Haily Windy Night [which is on Martin Carthy's Landfall]) but if looked at another way is a totally different kettle of fish. What I did was to take it and combine it with another fragment collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams from one Billy Waggs called The Lady Looked Out or The Proud Pedlar and with the song part of a cante-fable collected from Kate Thompson by Kidson called One Moonlight Night (which incidentally was versified by Kidson's wife and called he Robber Groom). I added a couple of verses, and this is the result."

From the liner notes of Sweet Wivelsfield.