A prosodic and semantic observation —

I always say that one of the glories of the language of folksong is its knack of teetering on the edge of doggerel but never quite tumbling over. But some versions recently posted do not succeed in this.

In particular, the one two posts back, for the sake of the rhyme, confuses,"hence"

which = "away from here"

with its opposite, "hither"

which = "to here" —

Most unfortunate because it contradicts the sense which even near-doggerel should avoid doing.

≈M≈