This song about a lovers’ tiff, reconciliation and eventual marriage is surprisingly rare. It sometimes gets bundled together with another song “Fare thee well, Cold Winter” but the resemblance is superficial. Only 4 versions have ever turned up, 2 of those being in Gloucestershire. Alfred Williams in about 1920 described it as “A plain old song, one of the simpler kind of ballad: it has been sung around Cirencester for more than a century.”

Notes by Gwilym Davies 28 April 2015