Not a folk song in any shape or form; not really a song at all, just two and a quarter verses with a recurring last line. To put it another way, it’s the theme from Joss Whedon’s daft, doomed, brilliant space western series Firefly.
What’s it doing here? Consider if you will the folkloric identification of Hughie the Graeme as a border reiver, a savage outlaw operating on the fringes of English settlement; and who were the Big Bad in Firefly?
That’s circumstantial, admittedly, but then look at that recurring last line:
You can’t take the sky from me
and remember what H. the G. says to his father:
Though they bereave me of my life
They cannot take the heavens from me
Coincidence? I think not.
Also, I really like the song. Theme. Whatever.
Fifty-Two Folk Songs 