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.