It just occurred to me that if anyone wanted to do something a little different to the lyrics of Alison Gross, they could do a lot worse than using the tune James Raynard uses on his excellent "Loathsome Worm & the Mackerel of the Sea", from his brilliant, bewilderingly overlooked album 'Strange Histories'.

It's a close cousin in terms of the words/story and the lines have a similar rhythm. Wouldn't be difficult to adapt. Without digging out James' album to look at the CD booklet notes, if memory serves I think he found some 16th century Italian tune to fit to the words, so Moos would certainly find a requisite degree of antiquity there.