Bed frames were not until somewhere in the 15th century. The beds in the stories would only be able to break if the mattress is on a bed frame. The beds, assuming they are not an adapted addition to the story (which would be difficult considering that both accounts tell us about them). There is one element that can give us a hint on the time of origin.
The reason Mure’s version is not considered to be quite the original, even when it is older, is that Southey’s version is the most popular one and upon which all adaptations are based. Being these two the earliest recordings, and having so little information about Eleanor Mure, it is difficult to determine whether the story originated in Canada or England. It was written by Eleanor Mure ( link), as a gift for his nephew. In 1839, George Nicol, under the approval of Southey, published a versified version ( link) This is what was thought for a long time, until in 1951 an even earlier version, was found in Toronto. We ignore how Southey’s uncle William or anyone else came to know about it. A mention to this vixen variant is found by the folklorist Joseph Jacobs, who heard this variant from John Batten, who at the same time heard it from a woman who claimed to hear of the story as a child. Southey came to know of this story through his uncle William Tyler, in which the antagonist was a vixen and not an old woman some say that Southey understood by vixen a bad woman. All we know is Robert Southey was the first person to publish this tale on a book (The Doctor, 1834, chapter CXXIX, page 327, link, page 377 of PDF) but, fore sure, the story was told and retold before. This fairy tale cannot be traced too far back in time we may assume that it was a folk tale developed in the surroundings of England.
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