Jack-A-Roe

From "World Gone Wrong, More About The Songs" by John Way ("The Telegraph" #47):

The title, "Jack-A-Roe", is a corruption of Jack Monroe (or Monroe), which is one of the early names given to the Irish/Scottish song which gave rise to the Southern mountain ballad that Dylan sings here. This is yet another song learned from Tom Paley, and presumably the tune too, which is incidentally the same one as sung by Joan Baez on the 1963 album "In Concert, Part 2." The lyric is more or less a composite of two versions collected by Cecil Sharp under the title "Jack Went A-Sailing". The first is from a Mrs. Combs in Kentucky in August 1908, the version which is the source of the anomaly between the sailor boy's name - Jacky Frasier - and the heroine's "nom de guerre" Jackaroe. The second is from a Miss MacKinney in Georgia in May 1910.

Also known as "Jackaroe," "Jack Munro," "Jack Monroe," & "Jackie Monroe"