Willie Moore - Joan Baez

Willie Moore was a king, his age twenty-one

He courted a damsel fair;

O, her eyes was as bright as the diamonds every night

And wavy black was her hair

He courted her both night and day

'Til to marry they did agree;

But when he came to get her parents consent

They said it could never be

She threw herself in Willie Moore’s arms

As oftime had done before;

But little did he think when they parted that night

Sweet Anna he would see no more

It was about the tenth of May

The time I remember well;

That very same night, her body disappeared

In a way no tongue could tell

Sweet Annie was loved both far and near

Had friends most all around;

And in a little brook before the cottage door

The body of sweet Anna was found

She was taken by her weeping friends

And carried to her parent’s room

And there she was dressed in a gown of snowy white

And laid her in a lonely tomb

Her parents now are left all alone

One mourns while the other one weeps;

And in a grassy mound before the cottage door

The body of sweet Anna still sleeps

[Willie Moore never spoke that anyone heard

And at length from his friends did part

And the last heard from him, he’d gone to Montreal

Where he died of a broken heart.]

This song was composed in the flowery West

By a man you may never have seen;

O, I’ll tell you his name, but it is not in full