The words seem to be a vague collation from memory, with no specifics given; Baez and Redpath being named just as singers from whom bits of it might have come. The tune, I think, is more-or-less that recorded by Ewan MacColl; he reckoned to have got it from his aunt, Maggie Henry Logan (Ailie Munro, The Folk Music Revival in Scotland, 1985, pp 135-8; she suggests that MacColl may have "adapted" it).

Quite a few revival performers have recorded forms of the song, to that tune, subsequently; learned either from MacColl or from Gordeanna MacCulloch, who got her text from Norman Buchan: who in turn probably got it from Last Leaves.