"I see Lord Lovel as a burlesque of some earlier lost ballad"
Why "burlesque" and why "lost"?
I really have no idea where "burlesque" comes into the picture at all.
Lord Lovell, Levett, whatever was extremely popular with traditional singers here in the West of Ireland and continues to linger here in the memories of a handful of local singers - Back in the 70s you couldn't "throw a stone around here without hitting somebody" who sang Lord Levett, and every one of them took it deadly serious - not a humorous send-up in sight.
Norfolk singer Walter Pardon's family version was a beautifully tragic one - again, no parody.
The ballad has survived in oral tradition as a serious song right up to the present day all over the English speaking world, why should that form ever have been "lost".
It is highly speculative and misleading to assume that an earliest printed version of a song is any indication that this is its origin and that it hadn't been in oral currency before that time. We simply don't know and can only speculate on the basis of what little information we have.
This must include the tendency of people from whose communities we have taken traditional songs to make local songs themselves, many of which were never taken down or recorded because they didn't fit into the national repertoire and so could not be counted as 'Traditional'.
This part of the rural West of Ireland was rich in such songs, which were still being found in abundance up to the 1980s and some of which still linger on (particularly in the case of emigration songs - a theme which still impacts on everyday life here).
As with 'Lord Lovell' in Clare, it was virtually impossible when in the company of Travellers to "throw a stone without hitting somebody" who sang recently-made Traveller songs dealing with events that involved or had been witnessed by the people who made them - the Stewarts of Blair referred to them as "makie-ups".
The fact that our song tradition was a creative one as well as a medium for passing on earlier made songs really should not be lost sight of.
We really should have that "little talk" sometime Steve.
Jim Carroll