Hi,

TY Lighter!!!

From: A BOOK OF FOLK-LORE by Sabine Baring-Gould [1913] comes this excerpt:

There is a ballad sung by the English peasantry that has been picked up by collectors in Kent, Somerset and Devon. It is entitled At the Setting of the Sun, and begins thus:--

    Come all you young fellows that carry a gun,
    Beware of late shooting when daylight is done;
    For 'tis little you reckon what hazards you run,
    I shot my true love at the setting of the sun.

    In a shower of rain, as my darling did hie
    All under the bushes to keep herself dry,
    With her head in her apron, I thought her a swan,
    And I shot my true love at the setting of the sun.

    In the Devonshire version of the story:--

    In the night the fair maid as a white swan appears;
    She says, O my true love, quick, dry up your tears,
    I freely forgive you, I have Paradise won;
    I was shot by my true love at the setting of the sun.

    But in the Somerset version the young man is had up before the magistrates and tried for his life.

    In six weeks' time, when the 'sizes came on,
    Young Polly appeared in the form of a swan,
    Crying, Jimmy, young Jimmy, young Jimmy is clear;
    He never shall be hung for the shooting of his dear.

    And he is, of course, acquitted.

    The transformation of the damsel into a swan stalking into the Court and proclaiming the innocence of her lover is unquestionably the earlier form of the ballad; the Devonshire version is a later rationalising of the incident. Now, in neither form is the ballad very ancient; and in the passage of the girl's soul into a swan we can see how that among our peasantry to a late period the notion of trans-migration has survived.

Richie