Lament of a Border Widow- Atkins (OK) pre1913 Moores
[From: Ethel and Chauncey O. Moore, and is published in their "Ballads and Folksongs of the Southwest" (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964). The Moore's mention that this is from the print tradition not the original tradition. It was covered, with minor textual changes, by Bill Shute & Lisa Null on their CD, The Feathered Maiden & Other Ballads where it is titled, "Border Widow's Lament."
The print version that this is based on is from Sir Walter Scott in his Border Minstrelsy, III, 83, 1803, seven stanzas under the title of 'The Lament of the Border Widow.' The stanzas were given to Scott by James Hogg with Scott reworking the incomplete 7th stanza.
R. Matteson 2012, 2015]
Lament of a Border Widow- Sung by Mrs. A.E. Atkins of Jenks, Oklahoma. Learned from Scottish parents before 1913.
My love, he built me a bonny bower
And clad it with lily flower
A better bower you never did see
Than my true love he built for me.
There came a man by middle day
He spied his sport and went away
And brought the King that very night
Who broke my bower and slew my knight
He slew my knight to me so dear
He slew my knight and took his gear
My servants all for life did flee
And left me in extremity
I sewed his sheet, making my moan
I watched the corpse, myself alone
I watched his body, night and day
No living creature came that way.
I took his body on my back
And whiles I rode and while I sat
I digged a grave and laid him in
And covered him with the sod so green
But think not you my heart was sore
When I laid the mound on his yellow hair
Oh think not you my heart was woe
When I turned about, away to go
No living man I'll love again
Since that my lovely knight is slain;
With a lock of his yellow hair,
I'll chain my heart forevermore.