> Here's a quick analysis of the many versions on British broadsides.

Hi Steve,

Out of the list you posted, the Robertson, Glasgow chapbook made me curious, because of having one more stanza that the usual 34.
I've found it online at the National Library of Scotland. It's dated 1801. The text is very similar to Buchan's version. As I see Buchan also does, it replaces the Roxburghe stanza 17 with two stanzas that look like an intermediate stage towards stanzas 15 and 16 in the Deming Version:

A grave and a spade standing by she did see,
And said, Must this be a bride bed for me?
O perjured creature, the worst of all men!
Heav'n will reward you when I'm dead and gone.

O pity my infant and spare my sweet life,
Let me go distress'd, if I'm not your wife;
O take not my life, lest my soul you betray,
Must I in my youth be thus hurried away.

However it doesn't omit stanza 8 of the Roxburghe version as Buchan does – hence the 35 stanzas.

The NLS site also gives facsimiles of three chapbooks printed by J. Morren, Cowgate, Edinburgh – no date printed but they estimate 1800 (text more or less in the Robertson chapbook, two with stanza 8, one without), and one by M. Randall, Stirling (with stanza 8).

Since the Glasgow chapbook is dated 1801, that seems to push the line about the "spade standing by" back a few decades and to the British Isles.

I'll add this version to my chart. Sorry, Richie, I'll have to keep you waiting a bit longer for the .jpg version.