Bob and others, thanks for all the helpful recording notes.

WRT the Berry tune, well I think you might change your mind if you heard Adele Flood or Margaret Fagan sing it, it's a knockout. I'm biased of course, since it's an upbeat, guitarist's tune; I learned to fingerpick off it in fact when I was 14. I got Margaret Roadnight to agree to sing it with a sort of hornpipe accompaniment on a record project I tried to organize in 1983, until the funding fell through. Adele and I multitracked a demo tape of most of the Berry songs at that time.

I've only heard the Kempster tune done unaccompanied by Gary Shearston, and there it is pretty depressive, slow and droney, the sort of track you skip past, though I could imagine it being done well by someone like June Tabor.

I now recall that I ran into Martin WR at a Fagan's gig in Brunswick last year; it was late and we were somewhat in our cups but he did sheepishly admit he'd been singing a third tune round the traps. I've been an admirer of Martin since the early 1960s and would like to hear it.

Margaret Fagan is close friends with Margaret Walters so I guess I can track down that version too.

I suppose what is really worth noting here is that one lyric was so strong that it inspired four different composers to have a crack at it - really what the folk process is all about.

I have a bad feeling that Shearston's "Sweet Song for Katie" is also not the tune I like, which is by Mike Leydon (modified by several subsequent singers).

I'll post where I am so far with the discography separately.