“How should I your true love know
From another one?”[77:2]
But as the Queen demands the meaning of the song, its theme changes:
“He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf,
At his heels a stone.”[77:3]
And then, as the King comes in, she confuses the two calamities, and sings, as though her lover and not her father were dead:
“White his shroud as the mountain-snow . .
Larded with sweet flowers;