Fair Margaret and Sweet William

"Fair Margaret and Sweet William" (Child 74, Roud 253) is a traditional English ballad which tells of two lovers, one or both of whom die from heartbreak.

[3] Fair Margaret espies the marriage procession of her lover Sweet William and another woman from her high chamber window.

[citation needed] Traditional versions of Fair Margaret sometimes end with a "rose-briar motif" of several stanzas describing floral growth on the lovers' neighboring graves.

[6][7][8] In the United States traditional Appalachian musicians such as Bascom Lamar Lunsford (1953)[9] and Jean Ritchie (1956)[10] recorded their family versions of the ballad, as did many Ozark performers such as Almeda Riddle of Arkansas (1972).

[16] In Scotland, the only recording was a fragment sung by a Mabel Skelton of Arbroath to Hamish Henderson in 1985,[17] which is available on the Tobar an Dualchais website.