The material in Child from Nicol amounts to more than 7 of his ballads as they were being passed around from one member of the gang to the other. Child held Nicol's contributions in great esteem almost as much as for Mrs Brown's ballads. Money was definitely changing hands as Webster was a ballad broker passing ballads back and forth between the editors.

There is an excellent article by William McCarthy of the University of the Ozarks in Folk Music Journal Vol 5 No 3, 1987. It is actually about Motherwell as field collector but gives some insight into how the ballads were brokered and edited. It is well known that by and large the editors of that period paid fieldworkers to go out and collect the ballads and in some cases even these paid people paid others to go out and collect for them.

BTW David Laing was another of these ballad brokers carrying versions around the country as his job took him to different places like Glenbuchat.