"Who is at my window weeping,
Weeping there so bitterly?"
"It's I, it's I, your own true loved one,
Arise, arise and pity me."
"Darling, go and ask your mother,
If thou my wedding bride will be;
If she says no, return and tell me,
No longer will I trouble thee."
"How can I go and ask my mother,
For I'm her only child and dear?
Oh, darling, go and seek some other,"
She softly whispered in his ear.
"Darling, go and ask your father,
If thou my wedding bride will be;
If he says no, return and tell me,
No longer will I trouble thee."
"My father's on his bed a-sleeping,
With a shining sword placed on his breast;
All for to slay my own true loved one,
To slay the lad that I love best."
Then William took the shining sword,
And pierced it through his aching heart;
"Adieu, adieu to all false loved ones,
Adieu, adieu, we both shall part."
Then Mary took the blood-stained sword,
And pierced it through her lily white breast;
"Adieu, adieu to my cruel parents,
Adieu, adieu, we both shall rest."
####.... Variant of a 19th-century British broadside ballad, The Drowsy Sleeper [Laws M4] American Balladry From British Broadsides (G Malcolm Laws, 1957). Also a variant of an early 19th-century British broadside ballad, The Drowsy Sleeper, published by J Crome (Sheffield) c.1817, and archived at the Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads, shelfmark: Harding B 28(233) ....####
Collected in 1952 from Mrs James (Lucy) Heaney [1895-?] of Stock Cove, NL, by Kenneth Peacock and published in Songs Of The Newfoundland Outports, Vol 3, pp.733-734 by The National Museum of Canada (1965) Crown Copyrights Reserved. Also recorded on the album Songs And Ballads Of Newfoundland, Folkways FG 3505, LP (1956) cut#A.01.
A variant was also collected in 1929 from Mrs Thomas (Annie) White Jr [1888-?] of Sandy Cove, St Barbe District, NL, and published as #24, Drowsy Sleeper on page 55 in Ballads And Sea Songs Of Newfoundland, by Elisabeth Bristol Greenleaf and Grace Yarrow Mansfield (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1933; and Folklore Associates, Hatboro, PA, 1968).
