And all to see what could be seen

The heron flew east, the heron flew west,
The heron flew to the fair forest;
She flew o’er streams and meadows green,
And a’ to see what could be seen:
And when she saw the faithful pair,
Her breast grew sick, her head grew sair;
For there she saw a lovely bower,
Was a’ clad o’er wi’ lilly-flower;
And in the bower there was a bed
With silken sheets, and weel down spread;
And in the bed there lay a knight,
Whose wounds did bleed both day and night;
And by that bed there stood a stane,
And there was set a leal* maiden,
With silver needle and silken thread,
Stemming the wounds when they did bleed.

*loyal

Traditional Scots

James Hogg (1770–1835) [‘the Ettrick Shepherd’] learned this from his mother and published it in The Mountain Bard (1807).

It is derived from a sixteenth-century English original, ‘The Corpus Christi Carol’.


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