作词 : Traditional

“If you'll meet me at the Red Barn
As sure as I have life
I will take you to Ipswich Town
And there make you my wife.”
He straight went home and fetched his gun,
His pick-axe and his spade.
He went unto the Red Barn
And there he dug her grave.
Come all you thoughtless young men,
A warning take by me
To think on my unhappy fate
To be hanged upon a tree.
My name is William Corder,
To you I do declare
I courted Maria Marten,
Most beautiful and fair.
I promised I would marry her
Upon a certain day;
Instead of that I was resolved
To take her life away.
I went unto her father's house
The eighteenth day of May
And said, “My dear Maria,
We will fix a wedding day.”
With her heart so light she thought no harm
To meet me she did go.
I murdered her all in the barn
And laid her body low.
After the horrid deed was done
She laid there in her gore
Her bleeding, mangled body lay
Beneath the Red Barn floor.
Now all things being silent
Her spirit could not rest.
She appeared unto her mother
Who'd suckled her at her breast.
For many a long month or more
Her mind being sore oppressed,
Neither at night nor yet by day
Could she take any rest.
Her mother's mind being so disturbed
She dreamed it three nights o'er,
Her daughter she lay murdered
Beneath the Red Barn floor.
She sent the father to the Barn
Where he the ground did thrust
And there he found his daughter
Lay mingling with the dust
My trial was hard, I could not stand,
Most woeful was the sight
When her dear bones was brought to prove
Which pierced my heart quite.
Her aged father standing by,
Likewise his loving wife,
And in her grief her hair she tore
She scarcely could keep life.
Adieu adieu, my loving friends,
My glass is almost run.
On Monday next will be my last
When I am to be hung.
So all young men who do pass by
With pity look on me
For murdering of that young girl
I was hung upon a tree.