Great work, Kevin. It'll take me a while to sift through all that, but you've dug up a couple of versions I hadn't seen before.

Your effort at deciphering Mrs Griffin's lyric is better than mine, though I'm still not sure about the last line of the first verse. Sounds to me now as though it ends '.... she's gone'.

Interesting that 'Annie Franklin' from Newfoundland has those similarities with Tom Lenihan's quite unusual version - especially given the heavy Irish migration to Newfoundland in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. But it also includes that line: 'First to the barroom and next to the dance hall', which recalls Mrs Griffin's.

It's obviously a very complex set of connections - more so than Lodewick or Lloyd guessed. Interesting discussion.

Oh, and I enjoyed Jim's 'local colour' as well!