> Silly Sisters > Songs > How Shall I Your True Love Know?

How Shall I Your True Love Know?

[ Roud V18911 ; William Shakespeare]

How Shall I Your True Love Know? is the first of Shakespeare’s Ophelia’s “Mad Songs”, Hamlet, Act IV Scene 5.

Roy Bailey sang How Shall I Your True Love Know? in 1971 on his eponymous album on the Trailer label, Roy Bailey.

June Tabor and Maddy Prior sang How Shall I Your True Love Know? in 1988 on the Silly Sisters’ second album, No More to the Dance. They were accompanied Dan Ar Braz, guitar; Huw Warren, keyboards; Bernard O’Neill, cello.

Lyrics

June Tabor and Maddy Prior sing How Shall I Your True Love Know?

How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff
And his sandal shoen.

He is dead and gone, lady,
He is dead and gone;
At his head a grass-green turf
At his heels a stone.

White his shroud as the mountain snow,
Larded with sweet flowers.
That bewept to the grave did go
With true-love showers.