Lyrics are a Trad English folk motif about a woman called “Sovay” (form of “Sylvia”) who dressed as a highwayman to test her lover by trying to rob him of the golden ring she had given him. I made up the guitar arpeggio on the spot and improvised a vocal line over the top. The whole thing was done in a single first take. The percussion in MIDI/VSTi and was added later. Lyrics:

Sovay all on a day
She dressed herself in man’s array
With a sword and a shooter by her side
To meet her true love away did ride.
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And as she rode o’er the plain
She met her love and bid him stand
Your gold and silver kind sir she said
Or else this moment your life I’ll have.
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And when she’d robbed him of his store
She says kind sir there’s one thing more
A golden ring that I know you have
Deliver it your sweet life to save.
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Oh that ring a token is
My life I’ll lose the ring I’ll save.
Being tender-hearted like a dove
She rode away from her true love.
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Next morning in the garden green
Just like true lovers they were seen
He spied his watch hanging by her clothes
And it made him blush like any rose.
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What makes you blush at so silly a thing
I thought to have had your golden ring
It was I that robbed you all on the plain
So here’s your watch and your gold again.
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I did intend and it was to know
If you were my true love or no
For if you’d parted with that ring she said
I’d have pulled the trigger and shot you dead.
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