Weighing in on Reynardine:  I've always been intrigued by
the fact that the -ine suffix is usually feminine in French,
so this would put an interesting spin on the gender issues
in the song (unless the word form is still another English
"rendering" of a French pronunciation); but a colleague more
competent in French than I tells me that it can also be a
diminutive ending, thus, "Little Reynard." Some other
possibilities (go to the older French dictionaries for
earlier discussions of Re(y)nard; the possibilities are
quite fascinating): the name may come from the French verb
renarder, to trick (which does seem appropriate here). Of
course, the verb may reflect the tradition of the fox, too,
as in English "to fox" or "out-fox" someone.

Tactically, within the song: if R is indeed a nobleman with
a castle, why would he need to cajole his victim into not
talking? He could do anything he wants to. So I assume that
he's not a lord, but rather someone who may have access to
the castle and is lying about himself. "Renard" is also used
in the early French trades as a jargon for journeyman
carpenter, and Maitre Reynard was often used to indicate
"master of the keep."  We may never solve it completely, but
the whole song seems to me to be mainly about subterfuge and
seduction, not moral warning. And the ending verse about
shunning bad company is either an add-on (which you've
already suggested) or else an ironic aspect of the
subterfuge (blame the victim of the seduction--well, that's
not a new one anyway, is it?). She's not described as
keeping bad company or having rowdy ways--quite the
contrary.  But it does look like the standard trope of a
woman alone ("out and away" from  social safety, as Renwick
might observe)  interpreted (by a male) as an open
invitation to dalliance.

The only version of the song I know, apparently from
Vermont (but I learned it from Joe Hickerson and not from
fieldwork), feels very awkward in my mouth--that is, unlike
the traditional songs I know, this one features odd
word-order inversions of the sort one  finds in ballads
composed for the reading eye, not for hearing and singing
performances. To me, this suggests that it's not of great
antiquity, and therefore all of our speculation about how it
fits in one older tradition or another may be off the
subject.

Regards to all,

Barre Toelken