Our experience with other RVW material from our area is that he was very economic (time was always of the essence) and I would say that, in general he always seems to have noted sufficient to find the whole song - sufficient but no more than that. You 'Game of Cards' tune being a case in point.
I was looking at one of the RIBA photos of the newly built Cecil Sharp House and noted the library with its mainly empty bookshelves. Its important to remember that RVW and his contemporaries were working with less than that. You only have to glance through the doorway of the VWML now to see how far we've come in 100 years! We have it pretty easy when undertaking Alan's type of quest.