> 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.

I doubt that it could.

But why is that even important. Many, many years ago I too was caught up in the idea of a "pure" oral tradition that had produced numberless masterpieces.

But the number of real masterpieces is limited and the best - which are unlikely to have circulated very far beyond the family circle - usually from "questionable" (i.e., rather literate) sources.

Steve and I have recently been in discussion about MacColl's "Sir Patrick Spens," which he claims to have learned from his father. Did he really? Or did he cobble it together mostly on his own?

The real question is what difference does it make? If learned from his father, where did his father's source learn it? Somebody put it together at some time, and that somebody had a very special talent for Scottish balladry.

The result, which to me is a "timeless" as a song can be, is possibly of greater interest than exactly when it appeared - which at the moment is about 1950, with little influence until it began to be "covered" by others in the 1960s.

The possibility that MacColl's may be the "ur-text," miraculously recovered from oral tradition in the twentieth century is close to zero. And we'd have know way to know it without written documents.

What lies behind individual texts of "Spens" and "Barbara Allen" would be nice to know, but even informed conjecture can only go so far. We don't even know just how much of "Tam Lin" came from Robert Burns. In theory most all of it, even though it's based on a folk tale.