Matters of the heart have a habit of turning red, raw and bloody in traditional songs, and so it goes with Died for Love, also known as A Sailor's Life, Sweet William, and Willie the Bold Sailor Boy (and performed by everyone from Fairport Convention to The Watersons). It's a tale of a woman pining for her true love who has set out to sea and not returned. Desperate to find him, she sets out to sea herself and meets the Queen's ship. She asks if they have seen William, and after some discussion over the cut and colour of his coat and hair, they tell her he has drowned.

Some versions of the song end here, but Died for Love (as performed here by Martin and Eliza Carthy) continues, with a verse in which her father enters her bedroom to find her "hanging by a rope", with a note attached to her chest asking him to bury her with marble stones at her head and feet, with a snow-white dove in the middle, "just to let the world know that I died for love."