Here is Doc Watson's version from Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson at Folk City. The notes say "Doc's debt to old records again shows. This is derived from a 1927 Columbia recording by Burnett and Rutherford and is one of the most memorable recordings from the golden age of early hillbilly bands...It is much more a folk song revival approach than Doc would be taking a few years later".

Mick


WILLIE MOORE

Willie Moore was a king, his age twenty-one
And he courted a damsel fair.
Oh her eyes were as bright as the diamonds after night
And wavy black was her hair.

He courted her both night and day
Till on marry they did agree.
But when he came to get her parents' consent
They said that could never be.

Oh it was about the tenth of May,
The time I remember well,
That very same night her body disappeared
In a way no tongue could tell.

Sweet Annie was loved both far and near
Had friends most all around
And in a little brook before the cottage door
The body of sweet Annie was found.

She was taken by her weeping friends
And carried to her parents' room.
And there she was dressed in a shroud of snowy white
And laid in a lonely tomb.

Her parents now are left alone,
One mourns while the other weeps.
Beneath a grassy mound before the cottage door
The body of sweet Annie sleeps.

Willie Moore scarcely spoke to his friends they say
And at last from them all he did part.
And the last heard from him he was in Montreal
Where he died of a broken heart.