> The version is reprinted from Grieg (his A version) and was collected in 1905 from Mrs. Gillespie

Thank, Richie. Yes, that's the one. Friedman doesn't give the date and the singer, so thanks for that information too. As Riley says, nine stanzas are basically the same as in Ramsay, including the give-away change from "hooly, hooly" to "slowly, slowly" the second time round. It's certainly too close for it to be taken evidence of an independent tradition of this version not derived from Ramsay's text.

As for the additions, the kiss stanza seems to be fairly common and I imagine it could easily have been slipped in, perhaps even unconsciously, by a singer who knew other versions than the Ramsay text. I guess the gifts and the family dialogue stanzas could have been inserted by a hack writer, as Riley suggests, but I presume she is just speculating here about a hypothetical printed text that might have existed. On the other hand, couldn't a version like this equally well have been created in singing tradition, in an environment where singers knew and respected the printed Ramsay text but also knew other parts of the story that were not in Ramsay? That sort of interaction of print and orality might not pass as "traditional" for Riley, for whom I guess "tradition" = purely oral tradition, but maybe a more inclusive understanding of tradition is called for, not least in a region like Lowland Scotland with a long tradition of promoting literacy and a rich stock of printed song books.

Quibbles about what counts as "tradition" apart, I agree that the "Last Leaves" text is no help if you're looking for indications that something very like the Ramsay text might have been in continuous oral circulation before and after 1740. (But actually I wonder how the existence of an independent oral tradition of a version similar to Ramsay's could ever be demonstrated, given that we know that his text was readily available as a potential model from 1740 onwards.)