The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #165044   Message #3956328
Posted By: Steve Gardham
12-Oct-18 - 03:14 PM
Thread Name: White cockade - soldier dies version
Subject: RE: White cockade - soldier dies version
Gwilym,
There are plenty of early broadside versions, but I don't off-hand remember this ending. Are you sure the previous stanzas are from a version of the well-known song?

Just checked a late Hodges printing which has an additional last stanza.

One evening as I sat weeping, down by the cottage door
A soldier came up to me and said that he was poor,
One shilling I gave to him, with that he did me kiss,
Saying he was the young man whom I so long had missed.

Nothing like your ending though.

However broadside printings do vary enormously from the regular oral versions as the ballad must have been rewritten many times.