Perhaps I had better repeat my comments here.

This set of 'Death and the Lady' came from Mrs R Sage at Chew Stoke, Somerset; Sharp noted it from her on 11 January 1907. Mrs Sage was 75.

I went on to say "The published text is a little amended in places; her "cold earth of day" is changed to "cold earthen clay", for example". This was based on the text as it appears in Maud Karpeles, Cecil Sharp's Collection of English Folk Songs, London: Oxford University Press, 1974, I, 233-4), but since then I have compared it with the transcription (also made from Sharp's MSS, but more recently) in Roud, Upton & Taylor, Still Growing: English Traditional Songs and Singers from the Cecil Sharp Collection (London: EFDSS, 2003, 78) where 'cold earth of clay' is given; probably the confusion arose from a misreading by Dr Karpeles of Sharp's difficult handwriting: "cl" may easily be mistaken for "d".

I can assure Q that the text he quotes is not a collation of Sharp's, though he did 'neaten it up' just a little in places. It is essentially as noted from Mrs Sage.