Steve, your comment about Joe Rae's ballad, that it "is almost word for word Child's A version from Motherwell. It comes out of a book, no matter who passed it onto who afterwards." is confirmation of something that I have previously written about:

"When the American song collector Alan Lomax visited Scotland in the '50s he had this to say about the singers that he met:

The Scots have the liveliest folk tradition of the British Isles, but paradoxically, it is the most bookish. Everywhere in Scotland I collected songs of written or bookish origin from country singers, and, on the other hand, I constantly encountered bookish Scotsmen who had good traditional versions of the finest folk songs. For this reason I have published songs which show every degree and kind of literary influence."