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The Grey Cock orSaw You My Father (Roud 179) is one of the famous English/ScotsChild ballads (number 248) and is sometimes known asThe Lover's Ghost.
It has been recorded by many singers, includingTim Hart andMaddy Prior (onSummer Solstice, 1971) andEliza Carthy.
A woman asks after her father, her mother, and her true-love John. Only John is there. He waits until all are abed and joins her. The woman tells the cock to crow when it is day; it crows an hour early, and she sends her love away before she needs to.
Two versions are printed inJames Reeves'sThe Everlasting Circle. They were collected at Beaminster and Puddletown in Dorset. "Child assumes the ballad to be anaubade, but in an article in theJournal of American Folklore (Vol. 67, No. 265, 1954) Dr Albert B. Friedman gives reasons for thinking that it concerns arevenant or lover's ghost, due to return to the world of the dead at cock-crow.—James Reeves. Popularly known and recorded asThe Night Visiting Song, the piece implies that the lover's death was from drowning at sea: he died because of the "tempest's rages" and must return to the "arms of the deep".[1][2]
