Mode: Raga:
My young love said to me, my mother won’t mind
And my father won’t slight you for your lack of kind1
Then she stepped away from me, and this she did say
‘It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.’
She stepped away from me, and moved through the fair
And fondly I watched her move here and move there
She then turned homeward with one star awake
As the swan in the evening moves over the lake.
And the people were saying that us two’d never wed
For one has a sorrow that I mustn’t tell
She sighed as she passed with her goods and her gear
And that was the last I saw of my dear.
Last night she came to me, my dead love came in
So softly she came, that her feet made no din
She laid her hand o’er me, and this she did say,
‘It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.’
the commonly-heard version adapted from traditional material by writer Padraic Colum (1881-1972) who is said to have encountered the song originally in Donegal; the air was arranged by Herbert Hughes (1882-1937), who also arranged ‘Down by the Sally Gardens’ and ‘My Lagan Love’.