pgreenhi wrote:
>
> Thanks again all!
>
> Barre, the Vermont text if it's the same one that's in the Flanders
> Collection is one she says is based on a rewritten poem--and if this
> doesn't absolutely clinch it, I don't know what would:  it has quoted
> quoted speech in the Flanders collection version.  WAY too much embedding
> for ballad sense, it seems to me (though others may have examples with
> better credentials from oral tradition).  I can send you the reference if
> you want it.
>
> I also found a book (again don't have the reference here, but if you're
> interested I could get it from work) in which "Reynardine" is discussed
> as "son of Reynard"--from the Reynard the Fox text.

A couple of points.  We can be certain the basic song was in circulation
about 200 years ago from the period broadsides I quoted.  They were not,
however called Renardine; the name in the one I quoted was Randal Rine
(assumed by the editor to be Ryan).

So my first question is: What's the oldest reference known to the title
"Renardine"?  That's certainly within the normal range of phonetic
modifications resulting from not recognizing what you're hearing; it
might have no real origin relating in any way to the French.

My second question is:  Can we find a literary or musical source around
the end of the 18th or early 19th century which could have triggered the
apparent interest suggested by multiple broadside printings?  The
broadside version seems to me more like a reworking of a sung song than
a distribution of a printed source.

-Don