Hi,

Here's the ballad from the horse's mouth- the originator of the title, "Deep in Love"- Sabine Baring Gould. It was published in his Songs And Ballads Of The West (1891). Baring-Gould did a study of the ballad as we can see from his detailed MS notes. Here's what he published in 1891:

LXXXVI. Deep in Love. This very curious song was obtained by the late Rev. S. M. Walker, of Saint Enoder, Cornwall, from an old man in his parish. Miss Octavia L. Hoare sent it me as preserved by Mr. Walker. We have obtained the same song from Mary Sacherley, aged 75, perfectly illiterate, at Huckaby Bridge, Dartmoor. Mary Sacherley is daughter of an old singing moor man, who was a cripple, on Dartmoor. She possesses the unique distinction of having a house that was built and inhabited in one day. The circumstances are these: Her husband's father had collected granite boulders to erect a cottage on a bit of land that he deemed waste, but a farmer interfered as he began to build. He accordingly had all the stones rolled down hill to a spot by the road side, heaped one on another in rude walls, rough beams thrown across, and covered with turf, and went into the house the same night. In that house his grandchildren are now living.

Two of the stanzas, 3 and 5, are found in the Scotch song, " Wally, Wally, up the bank," "Orpheus Calsdonicus," 1733, No. 34; stanzas 4 and 5 in the song in "The Scott's Musical Museum," 1787 — 1803, VI., p. 582 ; Herd's "Scottish Songs," 3rd ed., 1791, I., p. 140; part of last stanza is like our conclusion. In "The Wandering Lover's Garland," circ. 1730, are two of the verses worked into an
independent ballad, showing that the original is earlier. Again taken down from W. Nichols, of Whitchurch, near Tavistock, it was a song of his grandmother's, who sixty years ago was hostess of the village inn.


DEEP IN LOVE.

1. A ship came sailing over the sea,
As deeply laden as she could be;
My sorrows fill me to the brim,
I care not if I sink or swim.

2. Ten thousand ladies in the room,
But my true love's the fairest bloom,
Of stars she is my brightest sun,
I said I would have her or none.

3. I leaned my back against an oak.
But first It bent and then it broke;
Untrusty as I found that tree.
So did my love prove false to me.

4. Down in a mead[ow] the other day,
As carelessly I went my way,
And plucked flowers red and blue,
I little thought what love could do.

5. I saw a Rose with ruddy blush.
And thrust my hind into the bush,
I pricked my fingers to the bone,
I would I'd left that rose alone!

6. I wish! I wish! but 'tis in vain,
I wish I had I my heart again
With silver chain and diamond locks,
I'd fasten it in a golden box.

Baring-Gould's notes are transcribed here: http://www.sbgsongs.org/userimages/Deeplove-comp.pdf In stanza 4 he had "mead" instead of "meadow." Obviously rewritten by Baring-Gould to make each stanza have an AABB rhyme- in fact he took out the line that names the song-- Deep in Love-- it should be first stanza, the third line, "But not so deep as in love I am."

Richie