Lady Alice
No: 85; variant: 85B
- GILES COLLINS he said to his old mother,
Mother, come bind up my head,
And sent to the parson of our parish,
For tomorrow I shall be dead. dead,
For tomorrow I shall be dead.
- His mother she made him some water-gruel,
And stirrd it round with a spoon;
Giles Collins he ate up his water-gruel,
And died before 'twas noon.
- Lady Anna was sitting at her window,
Mending her night-robe and coif;
She saw the very prettiest corpse
She'd seen in all her life.
- 'What bear ye there, ye six strong men,
Upon your shoulders so high?'
'What bear ye there, ye six strong men,
Upon your shoulders so high?'
'We bear the body of Giles Collins,
Who for love of you did die.'
- 'Set him down, set him down,' Lady Anna she cry'd,
'On the grass that grows so green;
Tomorrow, before the clock strikes ten,
My body shall lye by hisn.'
- Lady Anna was buried in the east,
Giles Collins was buried in the west;
There grew a lilly from Giles Collins
That touchd Lady Anna's breast.
- There blew a cold north-easterly wind,
And cut this lilly in twain,
Which never there was seen before,
And it never will again.