I tried to post this a while back and it got eaten by the system so I am trying again.

I have found and listened to two old recordings of traditional singers singing Bonny Portmore. Both of them gave me a surprise and are relevant to the discussions here.

One is the singer Eddie Butcher. The National Museums Northern Ireland sound archive have a tape of Eddie singing Bonny Portmore in 1970, recorded by Hugh Shields. The archive let me listen to a digitised version of the recording, but I had to travel to Cultra near Belfast and sit in their office to listen! The words that Eddie sings on the tape are pretty much identical to the words that John Moulden posted here on 17 Sep 00. However Eddie's tune is very different - I made a very rough transcription which you can see here (PDF). (I used to be able to write tunes in ABC but I forget how to)

The other is the tape recording of Robert Cinnamond, recorded by Seán O Boyle in 1955. The recording was included on the Folktrax cassette FTX-157 Not a word of no surrender in 1980 but no-one seems to have a copy of this tape! I found a copy in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library and they emailed me a mp3 transfer but they also made me sign a very legal letter swearing not to let anyone else hear it.
I made a very rough transcription of it which you can get here (PDF). Cinnamond sings very slowly. You can see that this is not the same as what Seán O Boyle published in his 1976 book The Irish Song Tradition (pages 50-51). He says in the book "Robert’s air for the song was obviously an impoverished version of the tune given by Bunting" and the tune in the book is not Robert's tune, it is Edward Bunting's classicised piano tune instead.

I wrote this all up with links and references on my blog. I hope you find this all interesting and useful.