I learned "Dark is the Colour of My True Loves Hair" in my youth from Mrs. Mae Shults Phillips, originally from the McMillon Settlement, near Cosby, Tennesse in the Great Smoky Mountains. She told me that, as a school girl (prior to 1916, the year she married)she and her girl friends would sing this song as the boys passed by as if they were crying as they sang it, to tease the boys. Her tune was close, but with differences to the Roberts melody. Dellie Norton, of the Burton Cove, near Revere, NC, told me in 1976 that she knew it to begin both as "Black is..." and "Dark is...". The tune she sang was quite a bit different than the way Evelyn Ramsey sang it. She said it was originally called "Fair Pink". Her neighbor Cas Wallin sang the same tune, but his words were often different and had the verse about "I'd ruther make my home on some cold,icy lake", a verse found in "Midnight on the Stormy Deep" which, in turn, is related to "Earlye Earlye in the Spring". Mae Phillips sang her variant also to a tune in a faster, livelier tune in a major key, but which was longer than the one in a minor key, and is very close to the song Henry collected in neighboring Sevier Co. as well as two others that may be found in the Frank Brown Collection of NC Folklore. In 1988 I learned a version called "Come All Ye Girls of Adams Race" from Mrs. Rendie Smith (appx 88 years old) of Mollie, Columbus County, NC, near the coast. I believe there is a version that Leonard Roberts collected in Kentucky and included in his work "In the Pine". As to the question of "the Clyde" in this song, I have heard all that have been mentioned in the discussion as well as "I go to Christ...". On more than one occasion I've wondered if the "I go to Troublesome" verse couldn't possibly be "I go to trouble some, to mourn and weep" which certainly would be in context with the drift of the song.