"Let's have 20 well-known 'country' examples from the English corpus"
Seems more than a little impertinent to demand such detailed work on something most of us have taken for granted throughout the time we have been involved, when you have not produced a single example of your own other than dates on paper, but OK- but will do it bit by bit so as not to mess everybody else about.
These stand out for me.
MAID OF AUSTRALIA a: very popular in Norfolk, sung by the three greats, Sam, Harry and Walter - we recorded it from Winterton man Bob Green.
I've always assumed that Oxborough was an Australian river, but I could never get any hits for it on Google Earth. An old friend, Bob Thomson researched the song and found that Oxborough, due west of Norwich once included a settlement of returned Australian convicts. Bob, (now almost certainly retired, left Cambridgeshire to become a professor of English in Gainesville, Florida) was convinced that due to this reference the song probably originated there. Before he left the UK his specialist subject was broadsides and he worked at length on the Madden Collection.
Staying in Norfolk:
BUTTER and CHEESE and ALL - Sam and Harry.
I was always puzzled by the idea of being able to scramble up a chimney in a hurry to hide.
Sam told Charles Parker and Walter Pardon told us of the closely kept secret custom in Norfolk of 'press gang rails', iron rods built into the chimneys to create a bolt hole for those wishing to avoid the attention of the press gangs that plagued the Norfolk coast in the early part of the 19th century - both Sam and Walter Pardon linked it to the prectice - I think it is included on Sam's Now Is The Time For Fishing album - it certainly is in his actuality recordings.
THE MOWING MATCH (recorded from Becket Whitehead)
Speaks for itself; couldn't possible have been made by an outsider, with all its detailed local references to names, work, sporting rules and judging practices.
Breakfast calls; will try to do some more later - bloody exhausting way to start the day.
Jim Carroll