Fascinating song!

From first listening it *seemed* clear to me that the 'brown girl' was a foreign woman with loads of dosh. Doesn't he have to fetch her from over the sea? 'Brown' is clearly commonly deemed a crude and ugly feature, compared to the fairness of Ellendor who indeed comments on how lovely she herself is compared to the brown bride! I always imagined the brown girl to be 'wondrous brown' as a consequence of her race, rather than simply having a white woman's suntan. Though it could equally be a wealthy suntanned white woman, born abroad and now repatriating to England - a member of the new money made via some trade.

The thing I find most interesting though, is the evident bias of the time - which I think (hope) we today do not share. Ellendor is presented as lovely - purely because she is extremely pale and for no other quality, and indeed so too she thinks likewise. But she's merely a self conceited snob to contemporary eyes - albeit one who was dumped by a self-serving money grabbing fella who clearly loved money more than he did her.

Anyway, a great story about the Machiavellian cynicism, superficiality, snobbery, arrogance and cruelty of the toffs! Not to mention callously using people, slagging them orf, murdering them and indeed abusing their corpses to boot!