Open my left side, and let my babe free.’

8

He opened her left side, and then all was oer,

And the best flower in England will flourish no more.

F

Notes and Queries, Second Series, XI, 131; sung by an illiterate nursemaid “some forty years since” (1861).

1

Queen Jane lies in labour six weeks or more,

Till the women were tired, go see her no more:

‘Oh women, oh women, if women you be,