Cecil Sharp's Note 37 (1916)

No. 37. The Drowned Lover

For other versions with tunes, see Traditional Tunes (p. 112); Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume iii, p. 258); and Songs of the West (No. 32, 2d ed.). In a note to the latter, Mr. Baring-Gould states that the earliest copy of the words is in the Roxburghe Ballads, under the heading “Captain Digby’s Farewell;” and that the song afterward came to be applied—at any rate, in the West of England—to the death of the Earl of Sandwich after the action in Sole Bay in 1673. Mr. Baring-Gould suggests that “Stokes Bay,” in the version given in the text, is a corruption of “Sole Bay.” In both the other versions above cited, and in another one which I have published (Folk Songs from Various Counties, No. 8), the scene is laid in the North of England, the lovers being buried in Robin Hood’s Churchyard.

The air is in the Dorian mode. The words are almost exactly as they were sung to me.