(Joe - Not sure which thread I should be in now!)

There is another (very brief - 1 verse) source for this in the Greig-Duncan collection (from the prolific Bell Robertson), that doesn't seem to be in the Ballad Index citation:

She became a ship, a ship
And sailed upon the sea;
And he became a mariner, Aboard o' her gaed he,
Sayin', Bide lassie, bide,
And aye he bade her bide,
And be the brookie smith's wife,
And that'll lay your pride.


The notes say that the song was know to Mrs.Robertson's mother before the Buchan text was published and quotes several letters from Mrs.Robertson to Greig relating this (and the differences with the Buchan version).

robinia - I'm not sure about the "commonly misinterpreted as a rape song" (don't know where your web site is, so I can't see what your interpretation is). Lloyd in Folk Song In England devotes the best part of a page to the song with allusions to (amongst other things)shamanistic duels and the "Bronze age notion of the smith as an essentially superhuman being, a triumphant wonder-worker, the magical master of the Earth-Mother in whose belly metal grows.

In Willa Muir's Living With Ballads the song (interestingly indexed as The Twa Musicians) she describes it as "following a well-worn tradition of transformation contests in Europe and in Asia that may derive, it is said, from magical contests between Buddhist and Brahman saints." and going onto priest-kings and substitute sacrifices.

Mick