Fanny Blair etc. are reflections of the common minded sensationalism you often find it broadside ballads, similar to that you find in tabloids today. Even so in revival performances the age is often upped in compliance with modern standards, and rightly so. I sing it myself (from the Peter Bellamy version) but only when I'm out on my bicycle, never in public. I sing 'Earl Brand' (Hey Lilly, o Lilly) in public though, which features a feisty young thing of 'scarcely fifteen years' but then again Shakespeare's Juliet was the same age, and God thought nothing of knocking up Mary before her 15th birthday.

Things are, thank goodness, very different today. We grant our young the joys of a long happy childhood. We empower them against the evils of predatory adults, and I'm sure if God has any plans for a second coming he'd wait until she as least 21 before sending his holy spirit to - er - move upon her.