I have come here via Jon Boden's excellent A Folk Song A Day, so with the greatest respect to Matthew Edwards and the late Malcolm Douglas I'm adding my two penn'orth.

Looking at Robert Anderson's original poem, I see at least one of the hallmarks of a traditional folk song, the change of narrator which allows a man to sing a woman's song. The "I" in the first line is addressing Jenny, but at the end of the second verse refers to her obliquely: "and that'll e'en kill Jenny", so is addressing someone else. In verse 3 it's obviously Jenny who has to steal out to hide her tears when Nichol (a common name in 19th century Carlisle?) talks of the horrors of war, and we follow her point of view to the end.

Anderson has clearly modelled his poem on a traditional ballad, but one thing jars to my ears: the mockery of the ignorant yokels (Jenny or Nichol or both) who don't know the difference between a Brigadier and a Grenadier. That suggests an educated man sneering indulgently at the peasantry.

I don't know if Robert Anderson wrote any other poems in the faux-naive folk style, but I'd be interested to learn what inspired him to compose Jenny's Complaint on the 19th of April 1803. An actual event perhaps, or an overheard conversation? Or a genuine pre-existing ballad?

A lovely song anyway, with or without the explanatory 4 lines in the final verse. And now I'll go and copy the tunes kindly supplied up-thread.