The Albion band (with Martin Carthy) sings this. The version including notes I post here comes from R. Palmer, Everyman's Book of English Country songs.

HANGÈD I SHALL BE

1. As I was bound apprentice, I was bound unto a mill.
I served my master truly for seven years or more.

2 Until I took up courting with a girl with a rolling eye,
I told that girl I'd marry her, if she would be my bride.

3 I asked her if she'd take a walk through the fields and meadows gay,
And there we told the tales of love and fixed the wedding day.

4 As we were a-walking, and talking of things that grew around,
I took a stick all out of the hedge and knocked that pretty maid down.

5 Down on her bended knees she fell and loud for mercy cried:
‘O, come spare the life of an innocent girl, for I am not fit to die.'

6 Then I took her by her curly locks and dragged her on the ground
Until I came to the river-side that flowed to Ekefield town.

7 That ran so long in distance, that ran so deep and wide,
And there I plunged that pretty fair maid that should have been my bride.

8 When I went home to my parents' house, about ten o'clock that night,
My mother she jumped out of bed, all for to light the light.

9 She asked me and she questioned me, 'What stains your hands and clothes?'
And the answer I gave back to her, 'I been bleeding at the nose.'

10. No rest, no rest, all that long night, no rest could I find,
For the sparks of fire and brimstone all round my head did shine.

11. And it was about two days after, this fair young maid was found
A-floating by the river-side that flows to Ekefield town.

12 The judges and the jurymen, on me they did agree,
For murdering of this pretty fair maid; so hangèd I shall be.

Ekefield town: does not exist; but this could be a garbled version of Hocstow, the original location.

Samuel Pepys, well known for his love of music and singing, assembled a large collection of street ballads, which includes 'The bloody Miller Being a true and just Account of one Francis Cooper of Hocstow near Shrewsbury, who was a Millers Servant, and kept company with one Anne Nicols for the space of two years, who then proved to be with Child by him, and being urged by her Father to marry her he most wickedly and barbarously murdered her, as you shall hear by the sequel.' This was the ancestor of a great family of songs on the same theme, widely known in Britain and America until recently, under such titles as '7he Cruel Miller' ,'The 'Prentice Boy', 'The Wexford Murder', 'The Berkshire Tragedy' and 'The Wittam Miller'. One motif which invariable appears is that of the guilty bloodstains, explained as a 'bleeding at the nose'. H. E. Rollins, the American ballad scholar, found a reference in a contemporary diary which authenticates and dates the original murder: 'I heard of a murther near Salop on Sabb. day y/e [an e printed above an y] 10. instant, a woman fathering a conception on a Milner was Kild by him in a feild, her Body lay there many dayes by reason of y/e Coroner's absence' The composer, E. J. Moeran, took down this version from a Norfolk man in I92I

Wolfgang

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