Cecil Sharp's Note 23 (1916)

No. 23. The Low, Low Lands of Holland

One of the earliest copies of this ballad is printed in Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs (volume ii, p. 2, ed. 1776). It is also in the Roxburghe and Ebsworth Collections and in Johnson’s Museum. The ballad appears also in Garlands, printed about 1760, as “The Sorrowful Lover’s Regrate” and “The Maid’s Lamentation for the Loss of her True Love,” as well as on broadsides of more recent date. See also the Pedlar’s Pack of Ballads (pp. 23–25); the Journal of the Folk-Song Society(volume i, p. 97; volume iii, p. 307); and Dr. Joyce’s Ancient Irish Music (No. 68).

The “vow” verse occurs in “Bonny Bee Hom,” a well-known Scottish ballad (Child, No. 92).

The words in the text are virtually as I took them down from the singer. The tune is partly Mixolydian. The word “box” in the third stanza is used in the old sense, that is “to hurry.”