My favourite version is that by Tommy Dempsey and John Swift, on their Trailer LP "Green Grows The Laurel", a casualty of the Celtic Music disappearance. It has the extra 1909 "no two ere were wed" verse, plus another I've not heard before. He sings it beautifully (if you like the decorated style of Irish singing, which I do).


My young love said to me, "My mother won't mind
And my father won't slight you for your lack of kind."
Then she stepped away from me, and this she did say:
"Well it will not be long, love, til our wedding day."

She stepped away from me, and she moved through the fair.
And so fondly I watched her move here and move there.
And then she went homeward with one star awake,
As a swan in the evening moves over the lake.

Well the people they were saying, that no two e'er were wed,
For one had a sorrow that never was said,
And then she went home with her books and her gear,
And that was the last that I saw of my dear.

And still in the evening, when the wild birds they do sleep,
I heard a soft whisper and the young maiden weep,
I heard a soft whisper and to me she did say,
"It will not be long, love, til our wedding day."

Last night she came to me, my dead love came in.
And so softly she came, that her feet made no din.
She laid her hands on me, and this she did say:
"It will not be long, love, til our wedding day."