Again, some might say this is going to ruin it but anyway...

I am not an English native speaker and I ran across the Loreena McKennitt interpretation of this song. I felt some of the archaic forms evade my understanding and I really don't know what the song is about. So I ran to google and found this thread and similar. After reading all theories I took the lyrics - without the added last verse (the one that has the death connotations) and show it to my coworkers, the majority of which are English speakers. The consensus was , roughly put "they had a minor fight because the girl wouldn't put up, she left telling him to wait until the wedding and then he has a wet dream about it in which she still reprimands him" . Now before dismissing this as pure trollery, please consider that the initial versions of the song were more light hearthed in both song and lyrics than what we all got used of hearing. Also key to this is that most of these coworkers are people that have no contact or interest in Celtic, folk, Old English , tradition and so forth. These are people grown up on rave and at best rock music. And yes, a song is what you make of it - and even the outhor rights to define what he meant dillutes in time.

Just my 2c.

Jab