Hi,

Not sure if I put the Unfortunate Swain text here. I'm including a few brief unfinished notes from my "Deep in Love" headontes:

The placement of the identifying "Deep in Love" stanza as the opening stanza is one way to validate the title being "Deep in Love." Some other ways are: the identifying stanza is repeated as a chorus or if there are two stanzas in the variant. The "Deep in Love" stanza does not have other stanzas that usually go with it but rather it is from a set of stanzas found in "The Unfortunate Swain" which can reasonably be sung in any order. A number of broadsides were printed starting about 1750. This standard text is from The Merry Songster. Being a collection of songs, Printed and sold in Aldermary Church Yard, Bow Lane, London, [1770?]:

"The Unfortunate Swain"

1. Down in a Meadow both fair and gay,
Plucking a Flowers the other day,
Plucking a Flower both red and blue,
I little thought what Love could do.

2. Where Love's planted there it grow(s),
It buds and blows much like any Rose;
And has so sweet and pleasant smell,
No Flower on Earth can it excell.

3. Must I be bound and she be free?
Must I love one that loves not me?
Why should I act such a childish Part
To love a Girl that will break my Heart.

4. There's thousand thousands in room,
My true love carries the highest Bloom,
Sure she is some chosen one,
I will have her, or I'll have none.

5. I spy'd a Ship sailing on the Deep,
She sail'd as deep as she could swim;
But not so deep as in Love I am,
I care not whether I sink or swim.

6. I set my Back against an oak,
I thought it had been a Tree;
But first it bent and then it broke,
So did my false Love to me.

7. I put my Hand into a Bush,
Thinking the sweetest Rose to find,
l prick'd my Finger to the Bone,
And left the sweetest Rose behind.

8. If Roses are such prickly Flowers,
They should be gather'd while they're green,
And he that loves an unkind Lover,
I'm sure he strives against the stream.

9. When my love is dead and at her rest,
I'll think of her whom I love best
I'll wrap her up in Linnen strong,
And think on her when she's dead and gon[e].

Songs related to or derived from The Unfortunate Swain, also known as Picking Lilies, are identified by the opening, "Down in a Meadow." Notice that Baring-Gould's "Deep in Love' stanza 4 opens with "Down in a Meadow[]." Stanzas 7 and 8 are usually joined and come from Martin Parker's "Distressed Virgin" of c.1626. The other stanzas usually appear along with the "Deep in Love" stanza in print and in tradition. The choice and the order of stanzas seem arbitrary. What's remarkable is that the individual stanza exhibit a wide variety of emotions from the exhilaration of love (stanzas 1, 2,4,5) to the agony of despair and death (stanzas 3,6,7,8,9).

The first stanza or more accurately the first line is occasionally found in the Died for Love songs and their relatives. It's mixed with the similar first line from "Constant Lady," a broadside more commonly used in Died for Love. Stanza 4 ("If there's a thousand in the room") is found in Sailor Boy (Sweet William) a "traditional" relative[] of Died for Love.
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I never finished my headnotes. They are here: http://www.bluegrassmessengers.com/7q-deep-in-love-deep-as-the-love-im-in.aspx

As a general rule, with very few exceptions (one being "Must I Go Bound"): Stanzas from Unfortunate Swain are not found in the Died for Love songs. Died for Love is aligned with Constant Lady and the False Squire. Some of the related songs like Sailor Boy, for example, have a common stanza.

Unfortunate Swain is aligned with "Down in the Meadows;" "Love is Teasing;" "Waly, Waly;" "Water is Wide;" "Deep in Love" and "Must I Go Bound."

Richie