It’s been a (Lot) Long time

So a mystery I didn’t realise was a mystery has been solved:

A man depicted on the album cover of Led Zeppelin IV has been revealed as a 19th Century thatcher.
The figure is most likely Lot Long from Mere in Wiltshire, photographed by Ernest Farmer.
Brian Edwards, from the University of the West of England (UWE), found the original picture when looking through a photograph album for other research.
“I instantly recognised the man with the sticks – he’s often called the stick man,” he said.
A long-time fan of British rock band Led Zeppelin, he told BBC Radio Wiltshire “it was quite a revelation”.

I’ll bet it was. Apparently the picture as it appeared on the album was thought to be a photo of a painting when the band discovered it (and apparently it’s since vanished, too), but it was actually a coloured version of this photo:

Which then begs the question… where did the coloured version come from and who made it? The photographer is evidently one Ernest Farmer and the photo itself was found in an album he gave to his aunt… how, then, did it travel beyond the confines of that album, as it clearly did for Led Zeppelin to make use of another copy of it, and indeed why did it do so? Did Ernest do it himself? I feel like it’s only opened up more questions… Anyway, a tip of the hat to Lot Long, who I feel certain would never have even heard recorded music (or known that such a thing existed even in 1892), let alone thought he would achieve immortality on an album cover or even conceived of what those words might mean…