US & Canadian Versions: 25. Willie's Lyke-Wake
[This fragment is the only trace of this ballad found in North America. From Four Rare Child Fragments by Tristram P. Coffin,
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 64, No. 251 (Jan. - Mar., 1951), pp. 130-131.
R. Matteson Jr.]
The lines below were collected by Mrs. Flanders from the late George Edwards of Seton, East Riding, Yorkshire who spent his final days in Burlington, Vermont. The texts as they appear here are copied from a letter from Mrs. Flanders to me, dated June 4, I949.
"Willie's Lyke Wake" (Child 25):
Kind sir, if you please,
. . . . . .
He laid himself down as if he were dead.
According to the story of the ballad, the line printed first here would probably follow the one printed second, as Willie pretends he is dead before the girl appears. But, as there is no line in Child that even approximates "Kind sir, if you please" it is silly to speculate on this point. The second verse does, however, have definite counterparts in Child C: "He laid him down as he were dead" and in A: "He lay doun just as he war dead." As such an expression appears in no other Child text, Edwards' variant probably stems from the same source as these two early nineteenth-century songs.