The Young Lovers- (AR) 1931 Allsopp
[From: Fred W. Allsopp, Folklore of Romantic Arkansas, Volume II (1931), pp. 202-203. His notes (excerpt) follow.
R. Matteson 2016]
There was another song which was a general favorite. This was "The Young Lovers." This I remember as the particular choice of my older sister's lover. This young man, a tall, lean, handsome chap with a great mop of blue-black hair crinkling and curling about his high fine forehead, was a schoolmaster. He sang "ballets" on many occasions accompanying himself sometimes with the doleful plunkety-plunk of a banjo. The lines follow, accurate in this instance. This song made a tremendous impression upon me, the bloodiness of it, I suppose making it particularly impressive or, was it, perhaps, the handsome melancholy singer?
"The Young Lovers"
Come old and young, pay close attention
To these few lines I'm going to write.
'Tis of a young man that I can mention,
'Who courted a fair young lady bright.
And when her parents came to know this,
They strove to part them day and night,
Saying, "Oh, my son, do not be so foolish,
She's far too poor to be your bride."
And when the maiden came to know
She soon resolved her life to end,
For she could not live without her lover
And his parents will she could not bend.
She fled into the lonely forest,
A dagger in her hand she bore,
She plunged it into her snowy bosom,
Her garments stained with crimson gore.
Her lover being in the lonesome valley
Heard her weak and feeble voice,
He ran to her like one distracted,
Crying, "Oh, my love, I'm forever lost."
He then picked up the bloody body
And rolled it over in his arms,
Crying, "Oh, my love, you're safe in Heaven,
Free now from all unkind alarms."
He then picked up the bloody dagger
And pierced it through his own brave heart,
Saying, "I leave this a fatal lesson,
To parents who would young lovers part."