Bluegrass Messengers

Giles Collins and Lady Annice- Haggard 1888 Child

The following version is printed by Mr. G.R. Tomson in his Ballads of the North Countrie, 1888, p. 434, from a Manuscript of Mrs. Rider Haggard.

Giles Collins and Lady Annice

1   Giles Collins said to his own mother,
'Mother, come bind up my head,
And send for the parson of our parish,
For to-morrow I shall be dead.

2   'And if that I be dead,
As I verily believe I shall,
O bury me not in our churchyard,
But under Lady Annice's wall.'

3   Lady Annice sat at her bower-window,
Mending of her night-coif,
When passing she saw as lovely a corpse
As ever she saw in her life.

4   'Set down, set down, ye six tall men,
Set down upon the plain,
That I may kiss those clay-cold lips
I neer shall kiss again.

5   'Set down, set down, ye six tall men,
That I may look thereon;
For to-morrow, before the cock it has crowd,
Giles Collins and I shall be one.

7   'What had you at Giles Collins's burying?
Very good ale and wine?
You shall have the same to-morrow night,
Much about the same time.'

7   Giles Collins died upon the eve,
This fair lady on the morrow;
Thus may you all now very well know
This couple died for sorrow.