While I absolutely don’t defend AI or its accuracy, the story of the morphology of Matty Groves into Shady Grove is mentioned in a number of places, so it’s not hallucinated.

The tune was first known documented as Shady Grove because if its publication in a folklore journal. There are claims that the melody had already been added to the Matty Groves ballad by traditional singers. Based on that, it seems that the argument is not that Matty Groves and Shady Grove are the same melody, but rather that at some point a melody that may have originated across the ocean was used in place of the Matty Groves melody, then in 1915 the Shady Grove lyrics were published, differentiating the two melodies so that Matty Groves could go back to its original setting and Shady Grove had a new set of lyrics to go with the melody that followed some general themes that were similar.

The substitution of melody may easily have been an accident that turned popular or it may have been someone’s artistic decision to replace the melody to a ballad.

The anecdote that some people still sang the original Matty Groves lyrics AND melody and didn’t make the substitution isn’t particularly surprising, as many historical ballads were preserved by families that led a more secluded life and didn’t actively seek out new music or alterations to the music that they lived with at home.

The Violin Beautiful - You have no idea what you're talking about. Do a little real research, and you'll find that an English folk revival singer, I think Martin Carthy, heard American singer Hedy West sing "Shady Grove" at a festival in, I think Greece. He liked the melody and thought it might work for "Matty Groves," and Fairport Convention recorded it that way in 1969. No earlier collected versions of the ballad used that melody, either here or in the UK. The ballad is much older than 1915, dating back to at least the 17th century. It is Child #81 "Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard" contemplator.com/child/mattie.html
The Asbymal Idiocy bot is just scraping up nonsense it finds online and repeating it.

PS - Here are the variants of the ballad included by Francis J. Child in his collection. He was interested in texts and included no music, but there are other collections of some of the melodies used to sing these lyrics. sacred-texts.com/book/the-engl...y-barnard

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Originally posted by DougD

The Violin Beautiful - You have no idea what you're talking about. Do a little real research, and you'll find that an English folk revival singer, I think Martin Carthy, heard American singer Hedy West sing "Shady Grove" at a festival in, I think Greece. He liked the melody and thought it might work for "Matty Groves," and Fairport Convention recorded it that way in 1969. No earlier collected versions of the ballad used that melody, either here or in the UK. The ballad is much older than 1915, dating back to at least the 17th century. It is Child #81 "Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard" contemplator.com/child/mattie.html
The Asbymal Idiocy bot is just scraping up nonsense it finds online and repeating it.

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Doug,

If there are multiple sources that point to musicologists determining that the song originated in the British Isles, what makes you think you know better?

The same melody was also recorded under the tune name Lord Daniel far before the Fairport Convention recording of it as Shady Grove. The melody was a popular one that was used for a number of folk tunes, many of which were first published as broadsides in the 16th or 17th centuries.

As has been pointed out by historians, the history of Appalachian ballad singing is complicated and sometimes rather contradictory, because centuries-old tunes would sometimes be carefully preserved while other tunes would be continually adapted to fit modern uses.

It’s a bit like the art world, where ancient or classical themes would be used over and over as settings for artwork, but the figures portrayed in the scenes would often be painted according to the mannerisms or styles of the current epoch. Themes have been borrowed and traded throughout history.

There seems to be a suggestion that Fairport Convention recorded the version that became thought of as definitive and had an influence on other folk musicians thereafter, but it’s also been acknowledged that there was a tradition in Appalachia of using the same melody for both Matty Groves and Shady Grov that preceded it, whether folk "revivalists" understood that or not. 

I've heard Shady Grove sounding the same as Fly around, Pretty Little Miss, but the Matty Groves I've heard is way different than either one of those Shady Groves...just sayin'...you know...groundhog the famous musicologist's free opinions on sale this week only.