He avoids her interrogation at first, claiming that it is his hawk or his horse (or some other kind of animal depending on the variation of the song), but finally admits that it is his brother, or his father, whom he has killed.
The children's writer Edith Ballinger Price was recorded by Helen Hartness Flanders performing a traditional version in 1945.
[10] George Dunn of Quarry Bank, Staffordshire was recorded by Roy Parmer singing another version in 1971, which can be heard online via the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.
[15] Irish traditional singers such as Thomas Moran of Mohill, Co. Leitrim (1954),[16] John "Jacko" Reilly of Boyle, Co. Roscommon (1967),[17] Paddy Tunney of Co. Fermanagh (1976)[18] and Christy Moore of Co. Kildare were also recorded singing versions of the ballad.
Tunney's version, for example, (released on his Folk-Legacy CD The Man of Songs) was entitled "What put the Blood on Your Right Shoulder, Son?
[21] This version originally appeared in print in Bishop Thomas Percy's 1765 edition of Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.