"The story of Just AS The Tide was Flowing is explicit,MacColl like Williams was literally barking up the wrong Tree,"
Must have been Sam Larner I'm afraid - he was the one who passed on the information
Sam went to some length to explain his song.
I usually find that it's the older singers who know what their songs are about and the academics who try to read too much into them who get it wrong.
I've never got over Phillips Barry's spectacular exercise in kite- flying with his "magic island, mermaid" interpretation of one of our most beautiful domestic tragedy songs, 'Lake of Coll Fin' in The New Green Mountain Songster'
As far as bowdlerised the songs, I still find The Folk Song Journal's tune, 'The Girl from Lowestoft or The Hole in the Wall" wit the not "I wrote down the tune but the words are not fit for publication so I didn't note them"
The ones that got away eh?
Jim Carroll