WorldCat lists the publication date by Mel Bay as 1983. It can't have been in purely oral circulation for more than a few months and I suspect the period is more likely to have been measured in hours before he wrote it down.
It was played in Edinburgh sessions long before the Civil War series came out. Those session players got it on paper from the Scots Music Group (SMG) of the Gorgie-Dalry Adult Learning Project (ALP). A lot of those players are still reading it from their books having not managed to memorize it in nearly 40 years.