A Lover's Farewell- Tuggle (MI) 1931 Gardner
[From: Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan Emelyn - Elizabeth Gardner and Geraldine Jencks Chickering, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press: 1939.
I'm including this fragment because it was labeled a version of Child 85 Lady Alice. In my opinion it's not and can't be considered one, since there are no verses about George Collins or Lady Alice or his death. Floating verses have been attached to Child 85, especially verse 1. The second verse is more common in "Bury Me Beneath the Weeping Willow."
R. Matteson 2012, 2015]
9 A LOVER'S FAREWELL
(Lady Alice, Child, No. 85)
This text is a fragment very similar to other American fragments of a fine old ballad represented in Child (II, 279-280) by two versions which bear some slight resemblance to the Michigan form. Although there is only a hint of similarity between the Michigan text and the forms printed by Child, many versions of "Lady Alice" ("Giles Collins") contain one stanza almost identical with stanza 1 of the Michigan version. See Cox, No. 17, C and D; Davis, No. 25, C, D, E, F, and G; Hudson, JAFL, XXXIX, 104 and 148-149; Sharp, No. 25, A, B, and C, and No 114, and Smith, pp 142-143 Stanza 2 of the Michigan text is similar to Campbell and Sharp, pp 286-287, Henry, JAFL, XLV, 77-78; and Kittredge, JAFL, XXX, 340, text I. For additional references see sources just mentioned and Henry, pp. 175-176; Kittredge, JAFL, XXX, 317-318, and ScarÂborough, pp. 117-122.
The present version was sung in 1931 by Miss Mabel Tuggle, Detroit, who had learned the song ten years earlier, during her childhood in Concord Depot, Virginia.
1 O see that pure and snow-white dove
That sits in yonder pine;
He's mourning for his own true love,
Why can't I mourn for mine?
2 Go dig my grave; go dig it deep;
Place a marble stone at my head and feet;
And on my breast a lily-white dove
To show to the world I died for love.