Hi Annie,

I'm not convinced either that SOTS is a version of FH. As you say, it's more likely that both songs simply use some comon motifs. However, that's about as close to anything else as I've been able to get.

In fact "Kathleen Mitchell, who 'had learned it from her grannie'", supports my hunch that it's been brought into the revival straight from oral tradition.

Grand people grannies. My maternal grandmother was famed all over the north end of Birkenhead as a singer of Irish weepies and sentimental songs and (I suspect) rebel songs and street ballads.

Alas she died long before I was born, but when my Uncle Bill heard a record of Margaret Barry, he said "That's just how your gran sounded".

Ye gods! What a person to miss out on.