The original English ballads upon which Reynardine are based, most of which date to the Victorian era, are generally found under the title The Mountains High.
Washington Irving relates that the song had crossed the Atlantic and was being sung in Kentucky before 1832, and that it spread through North America in the nineteenth century as well.
A text of a circa 1814 broadside Ballads Catalogue: Harding B 25(1273) According to folklorist Stephen Winick, although the name "Reynardine" is found in one 19th century version, the association with foxes, as well as Reynardine's supernatural characteristics, first arise in connection with a fragment of the ballad (a single stanza) that was collected in 1904 by Herbert Hughes.
Lloyd generally represented his versions of "Reynardine" as "authentic" folksongs (going so far as to claim to have collected the song from one "Tom Cook, of Eastbridge, Suffolk"), but this informant has never apparently been encountered by any other collector.
Lloyd's claims have led to the current state of confusion; few modern singers know that the "werefox" interpretation of the ballad is not traditional.