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The White Rose in the Broom / Burd Margaret

[ Roud 3184 ; trad.]

The White Rose in the Broom is “a song from Abram Cooper of West Kent; collected by John Brune, August 1962” and printed in English Dance & Song 35:2 (1973) p.59, It is also listed in the Kent Trad collection in which Andy Turner is suspicious about the song’s origin:

It seems unlikely that these words were collected from a travelling singer—they look suspiciously like the work of a modern songwriter attempting to write a romantic ballad. John Brune certainly collected songs from travellers, but he also wrote songs, and seems to have had a reputation for “improving” some of the songs he collected. There is no other entry in the Roud Index for number 3184, which tends to confirm these suspicions.

Nick Dow sang Burd Margaret in 1978 as the title track of his Dingle’s album Burd Margaret. He noted:

A strange song of murder and the supernatural. ‘Burd’ is an Anglo Saxon word meaning ‘fair’ or ‘good looking’. The original title of the song was White Rose in the Broom. The accompaniment is by Bonnie Shaljean on harmonium and Ruth Morgan on treble recorder.

Holly Clarke learned Burd Margaret from the singing of Nick Dow and sang it on her forthcoming 2026 album Wild, Feral, Fierce.

Lyrics

Abram Cooper sings The White Rose in the Broom

Don’t go out late through the heather and the ling
For it’s there burd Margaret lies slain;
By the rocks in the moss where the wild thrushes sing,
Till the end of all time she’ll remain;
And out of her grew the bonny white rose,
Alike her, so pure and so fair; –
We wondered how so fair a flower
Could bloom and flourish there.

The white rose did bloom all this winter and the spring
Through the tempest and storming snow and showers,
And whene’er a passer did break him a bloom
Rightaway sprung a new haunting flower;
From the ends of the Earth they came to admire
The white rose, so pure and so fair
And wondered how so fair a flower
Could bloom and flourish there.

Percival rode through the broom on a day
He broke him off the white rose
It turned to blood and it wilted away
And the blood all over his clothes. –
They hanged him from the Sycamore tree
By the Snake and Pickaxe inn
For the murdering of sweet Margaret
Among the broom and the ling.