> This is what Cox stated in his 1925 Folk-Songs of the South: "The Butcher Boy" is made up of modified extracts from (1) "Sheffield Park"; (etc)

It seems to me that all of these songs are mix-and-match combinations of a whole load of floating elements, including some narrative ones (such as the courtship, and the father finding the girl hanging) and others with no narrative aspect (such as "There is a bird ...").