A great theme for a thread. Some of you (I hope including Rafflesbear) might find these lines appealing; some will scratch your heads and say "What's this about? ..." Well, they're just lines I especially like for various reasons.

Here's adieu sweet lovely Nancy :-

"The secrets of your heart, dear girl, are the best of my goodwill."

Not a profound line, but whenever I sing it I think, "Ah, that's so sweet." As I do with :-

"And may good angels send the rain on desert stretches sandy, and when the summer comes again, God grant it brings us Andy." (Andy's gone with cattle). For some reason that just brings the old lump into the throat. Just an old softie, me.

Clyde Water :-

"You had a cruel mother, Willie, and I have had another; and now we'll sleep in Clyde Water like sister and like brother."

Ballad of Springhill :-

"All their lives they had dug their grave - two miles of earth for a marker stone ... "

The Amphitrite :-

"So farewell Valparaiso and farewell for a while, and likewise all them Spanish girls all on the coast of Chile "

Captain Mansfield's fight :-

"If you must have my tops'ls down, come aboard and strike them down for me."

O good ale :-

"It is you that makes my friends my foes, it's you that makes me wear old clothes; but since you be so near my nose it's up you comes and down you goes."

Long Lankin :-

"There's blood in the parlour, there's blood in the hall, there's blood in the chamber where my lady did fall."

The molecatcher :-

"Ten pound?" cried the young man, "Oh that I don't mind - it only works out about threepence a time."

Shallow brown :-

"Though it breaks my heart to leave thee - though it breaks my heart to grieve thee."

Three maidens a-milking :-

"Here's a health to the bird in the bush ... and we'll drink down the moon and we'll drink up the sun, let the neighbours say little or much."

The unquiet grave :-

"Oh had you a kiss from my clay cold lips, my breath is earthy strong .... "

The week before Easter :-

"The young men of the forest they now ask of me - How many strawberries grow in the salt sea? And I answer them with a tear in my eye - How many ships sail in the forest?"

The yeoman's wooing (trying to get the girlfriend to decide) :-

"I will put on my best white slop and I will wear my yellow hose, and on my head a good grey hat and in it stick a lovely rose ... wherefore you should make no delay, and if you love me, love me now. Or I shall seek some othwerwhere, for I cannot come every day to woo."

Well, there's many another of course, but a personal selection like this would not be complete without something by Les Barker. From "The hard cheese of Old England" (do your own scansion) :-

"Those edam foreigners are not worth a mention; that old Gorgonzola's renowned for his stench and his brother Emile wrote novels in French, and it's oh the hard cheese of Old England, in Eng-e-land very hard cheese."