The old midi link is long dead, but a midi of the relevant passage can now be heard at http://www.classicalmidi.co.uk/holst.htm

Several programme sites do say that the song was from Hampshire, but this is wrong. Holst provided piano arrangements for a number of songs found there by Dr George Gardiner, and these were published in Folk Songs from Hampshire, 1909; hence perhaps the confusion. Writers of sleeve notes for classical music rarely seem to know much about folk music, and such errors are common.

Another site states, "The second movement uses the Cornish song I'll Love My Love, a modal lament about a maiden sent to Bedlam because her true love has gone to sea" (see Bruce Olson's note earlier on the subject). They are right; in a sense. The tune in question was noted by Mr E Quintrell, a church organist, from Mr J Boaden at Curry Cross Lanes, near Helston, in May 1905. Mr Boaden had learned it from a Mr Curry of Helston.

Mr Boaden, however, could not remember the words; hence Holst's sub-title. The tune was printed in The Journal of the Folk Song Society, vol II no 7, 1905, pp 93-94, with the following note by Lucy Broadwood:

"Mr Boaden learned this song from Mr Curry of Helston, long deceased. The words have been forgotten. Mr Quintrell, organist, who noted the tune, has been unable, so far, to obtain them; but there is little doubt that they must have been those of a popular ballad, Bedlam Walks, or The Maid in Bedlam, of which a version, taken from an old garland in the British Museum, is here given. In Johnson's [Scots Musical] Museum (1787) there are almost similar words put to a very different tune, namely Gramachree, better known as The Minstrel Boy. Johnson's version called The Maid in Bedlam is said to have been written by George Syron, a negro. Giordani (circa 1770) composed yet another, and uninteresting, tune to exactly the same words.


"The Rev S Baring Gould noted a few verses of a similar ballad, see The Loyal Lover in Songs of the West.

"The above tune was communicated by Dr George Gardiner whilst himself collecting in the West of England." - L.E.B.


There you have it, then: the song indeed has no words, but there is a reasonable guess made as to what its words might have been. I'll post them later, if there turn out to be none sufficiently close already here.