I've always been bemused by the effortless way people had of dying on the least provocation in the old stories and songs, typically "of a broken heart". In Ewan McColl's version on Folkways/Smithsonian, it seems that he may have stabbed himself. Don't have the words immediately at hand, but it's to the effect that "Put your hand down by my side, and it will come up red, where my shirt has bled for her," or something like that.

Dave Oesterreich