"The Fause Lover" is a Scottish ballad of abandonment, pursuit, and unexpected reversal. A young woman watches her lover leave and confronts him; he tells her cruelly that he is going to a fairer maid. She follows him from town to town despite his repeated commands to turn back, and at each stop he buys her gifts -- a brooch, a ring, gloves -- even as he insists she leave. Gradually his heart softens, and by the end he has married her and made her lady of his halls in Berwick.

The ballad dates from the seventeenth century and belongs to the Scottish popular tradition. It carries an eerie, unsettled quality: the lover's simultaneous cruelty and gift-giving, the woman's refusal to be dismissed, and the abrupt reversal at the close all suggest something stranger than a simple courtship. Some scholars connect the ballad to the "demon lover" tradition, where the departing man is not fully human.

This text appears in Hamilton Wright Mabie's A Book of Old English Ballads (1903), which gathered English and Scottish ballads into a single widely read anthology.

A FAIR maid sat in her bower door,
Wringing her lily hands;
And by it came a sprightly youth,
Fast tripping o'er the strands.

"Where gang ye, young John," she says,
"Sae early in the day?
It gars me think, by your fast trip,
Your journey's far away."

He turn'd about wi' surly look,
And said, "What's that to thee?
I'm ga'en to see a lovely maid,
Mair fairer far than ye."
"Now hae ye play'd me this, fause love,
In simmer, 'mid the flowers?
I shall repay ye back again,
In winter, 'mid the showers.

"But again, dear love, and again, dear love,
Will ye not turn again?

For as ye look to ither women,
I shall do to other men."

"Make your choice o' whom you please,
For I my choice will have;
I've chosen a maid more fair than thee,
I never will deceive."

But she's kilt up her claithing fine,
And after him gaed she;
But aye he said, "Ye'll turn again,
Nae farder gae wi' me."

But again, dear love, and again, dear love,
Will ye never love me again?

Alas! for loving you sae well,
And you na me again."

The firstan' town that they came till,
He bought her brooch and ring;
But aye he bade her turn again,
And gang nae farder wi' him.

"But again, dear love, and again, dear love," etc.

The nextan' town that they came till,
He bought her muff and gloves;
But aye he bade her turn again,
And choose some other loves.

But again, dear love, and again, dear love," etc.

The nextan' town that they came till,
His heart it grew mair fain;
And he was deep in love wi' her.
As she was ower again.

The nextan' town that they came till,
He bought her wedding gown;
And made her lady o' ha's and bowers,
In sweet Berwick town.

Colophon

From A Book of Old English Ballads, edited by Hamilton Wright Mabie, with illustrations by George Wharton Edwards (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1903).

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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