Digital Tradition Mirror

George Collins (3)

George Collins (3)

George Collins walked out one May morning
When May was all in bloom.
There he espied a fair pretty maid
A-washing her marble stone.

She whooped, she holloed, she highered her voice,
She held up her lilywhite hand.
'Come hither to me, George Collins,' she said,
'For your life shall not last you long.'

He put his foot on the broad water side,
And over the lea sprung he.
He embraced her around the middle so small,
And kissed her red rosy cheeks.

George Collins rode home to his father's own gate.
'Rise, mother, and make my bed,
And I will trouble my dear sister
For a napkin to tie around my head.

'And if I should chance to die this night,
As I suppose I shall,
Bury me under that marble stone
That's against fair Elanor's hall.'

Fair Elanor sat in her room so fine,
Working her silken skein.
She saw the fairest corpse a-coming
That ever the sun shone on.

She said unto her Irish maid:
'Whose corpse is this so fine?'
'This is George Collins' corpse a-coming,
That once was a true lover of thine.'

'Come put him down, my six pretty lads,
And open his coffin so fine,
That I may kiss his lilywhite lips,
For ten thousnad times he has kissed mine.

'You go upstairs and fetch me the sheet
That's wove with the silver twine,
And hang that over George Collins' head.
Tomorrow it shall hang over mine.'

The news was carried to London town,
And wrote on London gate,
That six pretty maids died all of one night,
And all for George Collins' sake.

Child #85
Sung by Henry Stansbridge, Lyndhurst, Hants.
(G.B.G. 1906)
JY

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