When he was dead, and laid in grave,
Her harte was struck with sorrowe;50
"O mother, mother, make my bed,
For I shall dye to-morrowe.
"Hard-harted creature him to slight,
Who loved me so dearlye:
O that I had beene more kind to him,55
When he was alive and neare me!"
She, on her death-bed as she laye,
Beg'd to be buried by him,
And sore repented of the daye,
"Farewell," she sayd, "ye virgins all,
And shun the fault I fell in:
Henceforth take warning by the fall
Of cruel Barbara Allen."
LORD LOVEL.
"This ballad, taken down from the recitation of a lady in Roxburghshire, appears to claim affinity to Border Song; and the title of the 'discourteous squire,' would incline one to suppose that it has derived its origin from some circumstance connected with the county of Northumberland, where Lovel was anciently a well-known name." Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 31.
A version from a recent broadside is printed in Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England, Percy Society, vol. xvii. p. 78.