“‘Dear girl, have you brought me silver?
Dear girl, have you brought me gold?
Have you walked these long, long miles
To see me hanged upon the hangman’s pole?’
‘Dear boy, I’ve brought you silver,
Dear boy, I’ve brought you gold;
I have not walked these long, long miles
To see you hanged upon the hangman’s pole.’
She took me from the scaffold;
She untied my hands;
The tears ran down the poor girl’s cheeks:
‘I love this highway man.’”
—The Gallus Pole, a version from North Carolina published in 1952; The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World, edited by Albert B. Friedman, 1956.