Hi,

Thanks Steve I need the Crawfurd-- I think its "Slighted Love" sung by Elizabeth Macqueen, originally from Ireland; Lyle-Crawfurd 43.

Becasue of Constant Lady's influence on (borrowed stanzas) the Died for Love and Love has Brought Me to Despair I wrote out the headnotes to Love has Left Me in Despair. If you look at the notes to Traditional Ballad Index you'll see it left them in despair too!

To read all the notes (several pages): http://www.bluegrassmessengers.com/7b-love-has-brought-me-to-despair.aspx Here is the last portion (rough draft- watch out for danging participles!!!):

The Traditional Ballad Index has listed a number of versions of the Died for Love family that have a stanza or two similar to, or based on, the broadside "Constant Lady." This is wrong. The criteria for inclusion for any ballad to be listed as a "Love Has Brought Me to Despair" ballad must be the Constant Lady's 4th stanza with the last line: "Yet Love has brought me to despair." If these words from the 4th stanza are missing them the ballad can only be based on the broadside "Constant Lady and the false-hearted Squire."

Belden in this Songs and Ballads" notes, 1940, addresses the issue, although it should be noted that "The Deceased Maiden Love" does not adequately compare to "Constant Lady" and that the ending of Pitts' "Sheffield Park" is a borrowing from Consant Lady." Here are Belden's notes[]:

One other feature, frequent in English ballads having a similar story but not found in any text[1] of The Butcher Boy, should be mentioned. In two seventeenth century broadsides, The Deceased Maiden Lover and The Constant Lady and False-hearted Squire (Roxburghe Ballads I 260-2 and VIII 635-6), in Sheffield, Park (Pitts; also in oral tradition in Hampshire, see above), in Lancashire and Hertfordshire texts of A Brisk Young Sailor (JFSS V 183-9), in the Dorset There was Three Worms on Yonder Hill, in an Essex text of Died for Love (JFSS II 158-9)--all having a story something like that of The Butcher Boy--the girl does not hang herself but, like Ophelia, goes in search of flowers to cure the wounds of love makes a bed of them, and dies thereon (or, sometimes, dies and is covered with flowers and grass by her loving mistress). This element appears also in an otherwise unrelated song from North Carolina, Dearest Billie (MSNC 7).

Belden's first footnote present evidence of the "heart's-ease" flower found in Constant Lady stanza 13:

1. Rather, in any printed text. In two texts privately communicated to me by Barry in 1917, one from, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and one from Deerfieid, Massachusetts, the girl runs thru the meadows gathering flowers, for

There is a flower that I've heard say
'Tis called hearts-ease both night and day,
And if that flower I could find,
'Twould ease my heart and please my mind.

The former of these has also the 'apron high' motif.

While this evidence shows the influence of "Constant Lady" and its inclusion in a "Died for Love" song, Belden does not say they are all versions of "Love Had Brought Me to Despair" which is exactly my point: Love Has Brought Me to Despair is Constant Lady with the fours stanza present.

Cox, in his lengthy notes to "Love Had Brought Me to Despair" in Folk Songs from the South (1925), fails to identify "Constant Lady" as the ballad's source.

My conclusion is:

1) Constant Lady is a different ballad than Died for Love.
2) Some Died for Love ballads have borrowed stanzas from Constant Lady which has also provided one common ending: She laid her down, and nothing spoke:/ Alas! for love her heart was broke.
3) Versions similar to, or based on, the "Constant Lady" broadside that are missing stanza 4 (the Love Has Brought Me to Despair stanza) are versions of "Constant Lady[].
4) Versions with stanzas from "Constant Lady" that include stanza 4 (the Love Has Brought Me to Despair stanza) are versions of "Love Has Brought Me to Despair."

Richie