A maiden sat a-weeping
Down by the sea shore,
What ails my pretty mistress?
What ails my pretty mistress?
And makes her heart sore!

Because I am a-weary,
A weary in mind,
No comfort, and no pleasure, love,
No comfort, and no pleasure, love,
Henceforth can I find.

I'll spread my sail of silver,
I'll lose my rope of silk,
My mast is of the cypress-tree,
My mast is of the cypress tree,
My track is as milk.

I'll spread my sail of silver
I'll steer toward the sun
And thou, false love wilt weep for me,
And thou, false love wilt weep for me,
For me - when I am gone.

abc | midi | pdf

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Source: Source: Songs Of The West, S Baring Gould

Notes:
Baring Gould notes:

Word and melody from James Parsons. Again, from Will Aggett, Chagford, In our opinion, a delicately beautiful song. The tune is probably of the sixteenth century.

Baring Gould seems to have edited this text a little. The song as quoted by James Reeves (The Everlasting Circle, 1960) original MS notes appears in the fourm thread under the title "The Forsaken Maiden". The most noatable difference is "What ails my pretty Sally?"

The heroine appears in other versions variously as Sally, Sylvie, and Sylvia. It should be noted that the editors of the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs used James Parsons' final verse, somewhat re-cast, to end their collated set, published as As Sylvie Was Walking.

The melody used for most of the other versions seems first to have appeared in print in Charles Coffey's ballad-opera The Beggar's Wedding (1729) as Once I Had a Sweet-Heart, though set to other words.

For a broadside example at Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads, see:

Bunch of green ribbons Firth c.18(28), printer and date unknown.

Roud: 170 (Search Roud index at VWML) Take Six
Laws:
Child: