Come All Ye Fair- Lizzie Dills (KY) 1931 Fuson
[From: Harvey Fuson, Ballads of the Kentucky Highlands (London, Kentucky: The Mitre Press, 1931) pp. 71-72.
This is not the song, "Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies." It's The Silver Dagger, a composed ballad from circa 1810, with the "Fair and Tender Ladies" first line.
R. Matteson 2016]
COME ALL YE FAIR AND TENDER LADIES
(From singing of Lizzie Dills)
Come all ye fair and tender ladies,
And hear this story I am going to tell;
A couple as true as ever was spoken
At last, at last, engaged themselves,
A couple as true as ever was spoken
At last, at last, engaged themselves.
And when his parents came to know this,
They tried, they tried, to break it up.
"O son, O son, don't be so foolish,
She is too poor for you a bride!
O son, O son, don't be so foolish,
She is too poor," they often cried.
Falling on his bended knees before them,
"O, parents, O-parents, pity me!
Don't keep me from my heart's jewel,
For she is all the world to me;
Don't keep me from my heart's jewel,
For she is all the world to me!"
And when this lady came to know this,
She walked the meadows and fields around
Until she came to a place of beauty,
And there she cried and there sat down
Until she came to a place of beauty,
And there she cried and there sat down.
And as she sat there broken-hearted,
She pierced herself through the snow-white breast;
And there she reeled and there she staggered;
"Oh, at last, at last, I am gone to rest!
And there she reeled and there she staggered;
"Oh, at last, at last, I am gone to rest!"
And her true, true-love being on the ocean,
He heard her struggling and her groans,
He ran like one that were distracted,
"I am lost, I am ruined, I am left alone!
He ran like one that were distracted,
I am lost, I am ruined, I am left alone!"
Then he picked up her bleeding body
And turned her o'er in his arms;
"Is there no one, no doctor can save you?
Don't you want to die in your true-love's arms?
Is there no one, no doctor can save you?
Don't you want to die in your true-love's arms?"
She walled her dying eyes up toward him,
"Oh, at last, at last, you have come to me;
You are all the one could have killed or cured me;
At last, too late, you have come to me!
You are all the one could have killed or cured me;
At last, too late, you have come to me!"
"Prepare to meet me on Mount Zion,
Up there, where true-lovers never part!"
And then he drew the bloody dagger,
And pierced it through his tender heart,
Says: "Let this be a faithful warning
For those who keep true-lover's apart."