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If that by us you’ll not be rul’d or led,
From our presence you shall be banished;
No more we will you own,
For to be our son;
O! let our will be done, or we’ll end the strife.
Madam, if I a begging with you should go,
Contented should I be in doing so,
So that I could but have
The girl that I crave—
No cursed gold should part my dear and me.
Was she as poor as Job, and I of royal line,
And lord of all the globe, she should be mine;
His mother said, in scorn,
My son is noble born,
And with a beggar’s brat shall ne’er be join’d.
He hearing of his mother saying so
Tears from his eyes in fountains did flow;
A promise I have made,
Her heart I have betray’d,
No other for my bride you e’er shall see.
A snare then for her precious life she laid,
And for to act the thing which she then did
With her gardener she agreed,
To do this bloody deed,
Her butcher for to be and dig her grave.
To the bloody gardner, she gave eighty pound,
To murder her, and lay her under ground;
All in a grave so deep,
In everlasting sleep,
That her fair body never might be found.
He wrote a letter, and sent it with speed,
Saying, My dearest love, with haste proceed,
