"The Foggy, Foggy Dew" is a paradigm example of the "folk process."
Submitted for your approval:
The well-known Irish poet Paul Muldoon (in "A New Literary History of America," 2009 , p. 609) takes Carl Sandburg to task for his naivete' about "The Foggy, Foggy Dew" (which he almost single-handedly made famous among academics):
"For example, nothing is made of the fact that there's a vast hinterland of punnery on the relationship between a 'fair young maid' and 'morning' (maighdean/maidin) in the Irish tradition from which this song partly derives [sic], so that the idea of walking [sic] through the morning/maiden [sic] dew takes on a whole other significance. The word 'foggy,' meanwhile, refers not so much to a 'thick mist' but 'rank grass' [sic] which compounds the erotics of 'the foggy, foggy dew.'"