As I looked over the castle wall

for to see what I could see,

O ‘twas there I spied my own father’s ship

come a sailing along the sea.

“Oh what’s the matter, O me daughter Jane,

that you do look so wan?

Oh have you had any ill sickness

or been courting some young man?”

“Oh no I haven’t had any ill sickness

or been courting with any young man,

but I have been sick and sick to me heart

since you’ve been so long at sea.”

“Oh was it any noble knight,

or was it any gentleman,

or was it by chance some rakish lad

that has just returned from Spain?”

“Oh no it wasn’t any noble knight,

nor was it any gentleman,

but I have been courted by young William

and he’s one of your serving men.”

“Oh will you marry my daughter Jane,

and will you take her by the hand,

and this night you’ll sup and dine with me?

You’ll be heir to all my lands.”

“Oh yes I’ll marry your daughter Jane

and I’ll take her by the hand,

and this night I’ll sup and dine with you

but not for all your lands.”

“I have houses and I have lands,

and I’ve money at my command,

and had it not been for your daughter Jane

then I was never a serving man.”

* * *

As always with folk ballads, this is a variant among variants. The version I know best is the one sung by Bert Jansch (“what ails thee, what ails thee, my daughter Janet?”), but I heard this more recently and liked the tune better (surprisingly, as the tune Jansch sings it to is one of my favourites). It’s Nic Jones’ version, recorded on the CD _Nic Jones Unearthed_ - the second track after Jimmy Allen, which is one of the few things of his I know how to play.

Other variants flesh the story out a bit more. The father is the king, and he discovers his daughter’s pregnancy in spite of her disavowals by having her disrobe in front of him:

Cast off, cast off your berry brown gown, you stand naked upon the stone,

that I may know you by your shape, if you be a maiden or no.

And she cast off her berry brown gown, she stood naked upon the stone.

Her apron was low and her aunches round, her face was pale and wan.

The king sends off his men “thirty and three” to apprehend Willy O’Winsbury and hang him, but on seeing the fine shape of the man who has “lain long with his daughter at home”, he relents on the grounds that “for I was was a woman as I am a man, my bedfellow you would have been”. In the Jansch version, we don’t learn that Willy’s a nob in disguise: he refuses to inherit the king’s lands, but from the conclusion -

And he’s mounted her on a milk-white steed, and himself on a dapple grey.

He has made her the lady of as much land as she shall ride in a long summer’s day.

- we can infer at most a symbolic nobility (he might be some manner of free spirit, the sort that goes around whispering “twa-in-yin” in impressionable creatures’ ears). The way Nic Jones puts the curl of the lip into the line “and I’ve money at my command” makes his William a very different character to the sailor John Barbour who explicitly rejects the offer of land and title in favour of “the raging sea”.