In most versions a gentleman, in some versions called Lord John, challenges a maiden to a wager, usually at very high odds: "A wager, a wager with you, pretty maid, My one hundred pound to your ten" That a maid you shall go into yonder green broom But a maid you shall never return"[2] or she makes a tryst and realizes she can either stay and be foresworn, or go and lose her virginity.
He is angry that he did not manage to take her virginity and, in many variants, murder her afterwards, though in others he says he would have murdered her if she had resisted his intentions: "Had I been awake when my true love was here Of her I would have had my will If not, the pretty birds in this merry green broom Of her blood they should all had her fill.
[5] Child included six versions, five of them Scottish and one from an English broadside from the collection compiled by Francis Douce.
[6] 47 of the 61 examples listed in the Roud Folk Song Index were collected from singers in England, mostly in the south, with 13 from Somerset and 7 from Sussex.
[13] The woman who enchants a man to sleep and so preserves her virginity is a common folktale and ballad motif throughout Europe.