As with nearly all songs I've written about I have conducted a full study using all versions at my disposal. Under normal circumstances I don't have all American versions and I lack a few of the more recently recorded ones, although on the latter I have all of the Voice of the People and most of the Veteran and Mustrad traditional song recordings.

What you don't see with oral versions of this song is that unusually the first stanza starts off in third person and jumps to first person half way through. Whilst this jumping about from 1st to 3rd person is common in both traditional and broadside ballads, it only rarely occurs within a single stanza.

As you are showing interest in the evolution of the song I'll look back at my analysis and see if I can find anything unusual. John Pitts printed a version about 1800 so I'll start by comparing that with the 1757 version.

LOM, it's never very far away when I start writing about broadside influences!