Hi,

I'm still wondering why the ballad wasn't found anywhere in tradition since it may have been around since early 1800s (it have to have come to US around then).

The ballad should have been around during the Golden Years 1776-1830 of UK collecting with Percy; Johnson; Scott; Motherwell; etc. then Peter Buchan was still around until 1850. Then, off the top of my head, there was Robert Bell, Halliwell, J. Broadwood, Frederick Sheldon, Dixon, Chappell, Ebsworth and so forth.

Where are the trad versions?

And nothing in Notes and Queries- that also seems odd. There were a number of similar publications that published parts of songs and other current events. Only one, "Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country," Volume 19, 1839 has version of the broadside Cruel Miller or, Love and Murder and it leaves of the first stanzas:

Many ballads follow; some supposed to be written from prison, others from Botany Bay; one from the gallows foot, too, entitled The Cruel Miller. He seduced a fair maid, and having " courted her for six long months, a little now and then, unwilling was to marry her, being so young a man." Things arrived, however, at such a pass, that marriage, or else shame, became inevitable, whereupon the cruel miller determined to make away with his mistress. There is some poetry in the manner in which the murder is described:—

"I went unto her sister's house, at ten o'clock at night.
And little did this fair maid think I owed her such a spite;
I ask'd her to take a walk all in those meadows gray,
And there to sit and talk awhile, and fix our wedding day.

[etc. to end]

So that's it, I just assume the subject matter and the fact that it was not considered traditional may have had something to do with it,

Richie