Here's the liner notes from Kate Rusby's lovely version on her first solo album, "Hourglass":

AS I ROVED OUT: A very well-known Irish ballad from around Napoleonic times. It tells the sad story of lovers separated by a governmental decree that single men, for monetary reward, should marry the wives of landed lords away at war so that the land would still be worked.

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Sounds a little odd to me...how'd all this go over with the Mister when he got home from the war, is what I want to know? I guess that would segue into another Kate Rusby song ;):

The Goodman climbed the stairs one night,
When the Goodman home came he,
There he spied a handsome man
Where no man should there be!
"It's the maid, it's the maid!" cried the goodman's wife,
"The milking-maid, can't you see?"
"Far have I ridden, much I've seen,
But a beard on a maid has never been!"

Heh heh...

M