Sharp and the 'Shooting of his dear' title. The previous well-known title was Baring Gould's 'Setting of the sun'. Sharp was perhaps asserting his own influence. It first appears in Sharp's Mss for 1903, not long after he started collecting. The version he recorded from Louie Hooper and Lucy White has the line in the first verse so it may have been the ladies' title or it could just have easily been Sharp's decision to use it. Whatever, Sharp continued to collect many more versions and used that title for all of them regardless of whether they had a similar line in them. The Hooper/White version was published in the Journal for 1905 and it was used in his very influential publications from then on, and a decade later when he came to the Appalachians he continued to use it. By 1906 Gardiner was also using it for his recorded versions in his Mss. This demonstrates just how influential Sharp was. Baring Gould lived out in the sticks so his influence was minimal compared with Sharp's London-based operations. BG only produced one book on FS whereas Sharp produced a great many.

As an adjunct I use that very title in my Master Titles Index as it is simply the one that occurs most in publications.