What is the oldest song you like?

The first thing that came to mind for this was Rivers of Babylon, because the words come from a psalm, but the song and the psalm are two different things really.

So...I enjoyed wasting the best part of an hour browsing the Roud Folk Song Index to work out which of my favourite folk songs are the oldest.

So the contenders were as follows.

Whiskey in the Jar - I was surprised how old this was. It seems like it would be romanticising highway robbery from a distance of a couple of centuries rather than while it was still a thing. I was also interested in the bit about The Beggar's Opera, which was composed about 8 miles from where I live, apparently. Also "ballad -monger" is a great word

The song's exact origins are unknown. A number of its lines and the general plot resemble those of a contemporary broadside ballad "Patrick Fleming" (also called "Patrick Flemmen he was a Valiant Soldier") about Irish highwayman Patrick Fleming, who was executed in 1650.[2][3]

In the book The Folk Songs of North America, folk music historian Alan Lomax suggests that the song originated in the 17th century and that John Gay's 1728 The Beggar's Opera was inspired by Gay hearing an Irish ballad-monger singing "Whiskey in the Jar"

The Wild Rover - Also 17th century. Elvis Costello came on to sing this at a Pogues show I was at.

In the English Folk Song and Dance periodical "Folk Music Journal" vol 10 (2015), Brian Peters claimed that the origin of the song was a seventeenth century English Broadside written by Thomas Lanfiere

The Parting Glass - I've always loved this song, and my daughter's played it now and again.

The earliest tentative evidence for the existence of the text is from the Skene Manuscript, a collection of Scottish airs written in tablature for the lute and mandora at various dates between 1615 and 1635, as a different (though distantly-related) tune bearing the name Good Night, and God Be With Yow9