More often the song starts with a verse describing the lark's song: The lark in the morning ariseth from her nest And mounts in the air with the dew on her breast, With the pretty ploughboy she’ll whistle & sing And at night she’ll return to her nest again.
[2] And goes on to describe the ploughboy's leisure pursuits: When his days work is done, that he has for to do Perhaps to some country wake he will go There with his sweetheart he will dance and sing And at midnight return with his lass back again.
[4] Mr Kemp from Herongate in Essex, in Lay Still, a variant collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams starts with a conversation between a shepherd and Floro in which she suggests he stay in bed because the day is wet and he responds that he will go to tend to his flock: “Lay still my fond shepherd and don't you rise yet It's a fine dewy morning and besides, my love, it is wet.”
Steeleye Span, Maddy Prior, The Dubliners, Tony Rose, The Taverners, Jackie Oates, and Magpie Lane have all recorded versions.
[11] In his notes in The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, Steve Roud suggests that our picture of this song is incomplete because "the early collectors were not keen on the sexual encounters and noted down, or published, only the safe pastoral verses".