- To Jim Carroll:
Would you mind sharing your version of the recording of Martin McDonagh's Young Hunting with me?

The reason I ask is that I tried making an mp3 file from my Songs of the Irish Travellers CD and for some reason it sounds all muffled and it's hard to make out the words.
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but it doesn't sound like that when I listen to it from the CD.

I'd really enjoy having it as a file that I can listen to on my PC.


- To Brian Peters:

I did a bit of version comparison on Richard's wonderful Bluegrass Messengers site and found some interesting variants of Young Hunting.

This version from Phillips Barry was learned by the informant's mother in her youth in Northern Ireland:
The Faulse Ladye - Nelson (New Brunswick) c.1849 Barry A

If you compare the text to Martin McDonagh's version you'll see that it is actually fairly similar.

This version from Nova Scotia is also similar to the two Irish versions but has an additional opening verse and some stanzas are out of order:
Young Hunting - Gallagher (NS) 1937 Creighton A

A rather unusual version is this fragment:
Sir Robin - Swetnam (MS) 1936 Hudson A

No supernatural "candles shining bright" here, but textually this fragment clearly relates to the early Scottish versions in which the king's duckers/divers search for the body of the dead man and the lady is getting punished for her crime.

It appears to be unique in comparison to all the other American variants of the ballad except maybe the following one:
Lord of Scotland - Edwards (VT) c.1940s Cazden

This is the only other American version to mention the father-in-law inquiring about his missing son (as far as I know).
Perhaps this is old news to you, but I found it quite interesting.