Do you know this version, one which I collected from a singer in Gloucestershire in 1978? You can hear it sung on the double Musical Traditions CD "Up In the North and Down in the South" (MTCD 311-2).

Giles Collins rode out one May morning,
When bloom was all in a drift;
And there he spied a fair pretty maid
Washing her fine silken shift.

She whooped, she hailed, she highered her voice,
She waved her lily-white hand.
"Come hither to me, Giles Collins", she said,
"Or your days won't be long in the land."

And he's set his foot on the broad river brim,
And over the water sprang he.
He's clasped her about her middle so slim
And he's taken her fair body.

Giles Collins he rode to his own father's hall.
"Rise Mother and make my bed,
And fetch me a 'kerchief of linen so fine,
For to comfort the pain in my head."

"And if I should chance to die this night,
I greatly fear I shall.
Then bury me under a white marble stone,
Set close to fair Alice's hall."

Fair Alice she sat in her bower so fine,
A-sewing a fine silken sheet.
She saw the fairest corpse coming by
That ever her eyes did meet.

And she's called to her serving-maid:
"Whose corpse goes there so fine?"
"Oh, that is the corpse of Giles Collins", she said,
"A one-time lover of thine."

"If that be the corpse of Giles Collins", she said,
"Go now and make my bed.
And fetch me a priest to shrive my sins,
For tomorrow I shall be dead."

"Then go you upstairs and fetch me a sheet,
One woven of silk so fine;
And hang it all over Giles Collins's corpse,
Tomorrow, hang it o'er mine."

"Then set him down you six pretty maids,
And open his coffin so fine.
That I may kiss those clay-cold lips,
That oftimes have kissed mine."

The news it was brought to famed London Town,
And through London's streets was spread;
That seven fair maids died all of one night,
Because Giles Collins was dead.