Lady Alice
No: 85; variant: 85[C]
- Giles Collin he said to his mother one day,
Oh, mother, come bind up my head!
For tommorow morning before it is day
I'm sure I shall be dead.
- 'Oh, mother, oh, mother, if I should die,
And I am sure I shall,
I will not be buried in our churchyard,
But under Lady Alice's wall.'
- His mother she made him some water-gruel,
And stirred it up with a spoon;
Giles Collin he ate but one spoonful,
And died before it was noon.
- Lady Alice was sitting in her window,
All dressed in her night-coif;
She saw as pretty a corpse go by
As ever she'd seen in her life.
- 'What bear ye there, ye six tall men?
What bear ye on your shourn?'
'We bear the body of Giles Collin,
Who was a true lover of yourn.'
- 'Down with him, down with him, upon the grass,
The grass that grows so green;
For tomorrow morning before it is day
My body shall lie by him.'
- Her mother she made her some plum-gruel,
With spices all of the best;
Lady Alice she ate but one spoonful,
And the doctor he ate up the rest.
- Giles Collin was laid in the lower chancel,
Lady Alice all in the higher;
There grew up a rose from Lady Alice's breast,
And from Giles Collin's a briar.
- And they grew, and they grew, to the very church-top,
Until they could grow no higher,
And twisted and twined in a true-lover's knot,
Which made all the parish admire.