Good work, as usual, Masato. I got that Holzmair CD when this thread was first working. He's a pretty fair singer for a trained voice. Seems the song is a standard in the leider repetoire both in German and English. When the B took the song back the new works snuck in. Dyer-Bennett cut it, too.

As I wrote, I did set out to get the original publication from Inter-library Loan. I really wondered what the actual original words were for certain. To my surprise, I got bunches to the original 18-teens books sent to me. They were very upscale, tea-table editions but there were a bunch. There were many original poems, trad songs, re-workings of trad and quite a few new & rehashed Burns. All given musical treatments and pre- & postludes by known composers. Thomson was one of Burns' major publishers and he included a memorial dedication when Burns died part-way through the series.

Since I couldn't precisely identify which volume the song was in, I kept getting wrong ones about 12 (some repeats) - never got the right one & finally had to give up. But I still wonder. Dyer-Bennett also cut it but he used the leider rather than the "folk" version.

Are you confident of your identification of Mrs. Grant? She seemed hard to pin down.

Last, I had some contact with Barry Dransfield about it. It remains one of his favorite songs and I think I enjoy his treatment of it best. It was Carthy that suggested changing lift to light for the Anglo-understanding of it. Reasonable.

Still a fine song.