There is a god deal of scholarship on this going back to mid or early 
20th-c. If I remember correctly the tunes for some Border Ballads were 
preserved only in the folk tradition of the lower Appalachian Mountains, 
carried there by 18th-c settlers in that region. Nancy may know far more 
aboaut this than I do.

Carrol



On 6/15/2011 3:37 AM, David Boyd wrote:
> Similarly, one cannot help be struck by how most north american folk songs
> and tunes are just warmed-over traditional British ones (and how Bpb Dylan's
> success is in no small part the result of his plagiarism of them)
>