This is a six year old thread that I am reviving. I have been searching for the source of the melody to this song. I've known it for years as a tune used by my uncle Donald Mork, known in folk circles in the fifties and sixties as Seraffyn the Wandering Minstrel, to back up his reading of Yeats' "Song of Wandering Aengus",

Here is a recording "Wandering Aengus" you can download.
http://www.mediafire.com/?z0fujf34gtmx2n6
It's a home recording made by my dad in his back yard, Uncle Donnie plays the lute, and his wife Ania Romaine sings the wordless tune. It's a beautiful combination, and I wondered for years where this plaintive song came from. The only clue I had was when, a few years later, Uncle D. made a record of "Wandering Aengus" (the same arrangement but with a different singer behind him), and in the album notes says "The accompaniment is an old lute exercise, to which a friend of mine composed the little melody you hear". On the label, the credit was "Yeats/Rustin".

That's what lead me to Mudcat and this thread. Someone mentioned Bayard Rustin and a recording of his song, "I Saw Her As She Came and Went" made by Bok, Muir and Trickett; I checked Amazon and the snatch they let me hear was most definitely the Eureka! moment. (It has also apparently been set to an Oscar Wilde poem; see the thread linked above called "Chris Couveau ? Ballad of Reading Gaol" for more on that.)

So, aside from the Seraffyn record I can also tell you this about the Bayard Rustin song: when I read the words above, I realized they were more or less the words to a song called "I Saw Her" by the Flamin' Groovies, from their Shake Some Action LP in 1976. What's interesting is the tune of "I Saw Her" is not the same as "I Saw Her As She Came and Went" (or "Wandering Aengus"), though it's very similar - you could almost sing the two together and make a nice Mamas and Papas harmony.

Questions not answered: where did the Groovies get this song? They credit it to "Jordan/Wilson/Wilhelm/Hunter", no mention of Bayard Rustin. Jordan and Wilson were in the band, Wilhelm is surely Mike Wilhelm, who was in the Charlatans and played solo before joining the Groovies after this record, Hunter I don't know who, unless it's the Grateful Dead lyricist Robert which is surely possible. In any case, they should have given due to the real author, even if they wroth their own melodic variation - but I'm more interested in where they got the song, because I don't know of any sheet music nor recordings made of that tune with those words together until Bok and company, many years later. The other question, what is the "old lute exercise" Uncle Donnie mentioned, from which Rustin is supposed to have fashioned this haunting air?