Alice, the tune that Paddy Graber sings is not the same one that's attached to Willie of Winsbury in the DT. If you listen to the links posted by Malcolm Douglas (12-Nov-01 - 04:46 PM ) and Stewart (12-Nov-01 - 04:46 PM), and sort of split the difference, you'll have it pretty close. When Paddy sings it, he occasionally varies a note or two here and there.

Child numbers are based, not on the tune, but on the basic story line, leaving room for what may appear at first glance to be substantial differences. When Child put a group of ballads under the same number, it was because he had concluded after thorough analysis that they were all variations that had sprung from a common source. Hence, Lord Randal, Jimmy Randall, Wee Croodlin' Doo, and (believe it or not!) Billie Boy (a parody) are all Child #12. A friend of mine did a research paper on Lord Randal and found over 1,013 different versions, all telling the same basic story and containing many of the same elements (e.g.question and answer dialog, with at least one line ending with the word "mother"). He found variations all over Europe, in the Middle East, and on down to North Africa, in many different languages. Some of the old ballads really got around.

Don Firth