Hi Anne,
I'm afraid as you will know, BA is the most widely sung and published of all the ballads, and whilst I spent an evening looking through the printed copies I don't have the time to do the same with the hundreds of oral copies. Richie is doing an admiral job with this.

I do sing the ballads but I've never been attracted to ballads like BA. I prefer the more magical ones like Tam Lin, Two Sisters, Cruel Mother, Maid and the Palmer.

Generally speaking in answer to your question, a lot of editing, rewriting and mixing and matching of the ballads went on in the 18th and early 19th centuries, by hacks, by sophisticated amateurs like Mrs Brown and Elizabeth St Clair, and indeed by the ballad editors themselves. Most of the ballad editors eventually confessed to this but poor old Peter was reviled because he insisted every word was from the source singers which of course is ludicrous.