Lily of the Valley
Words and Music by Judy Collins
Universal Music Corp. (ASCAP)/ The Wildflowers Company (ASCAP)
(Administered by Universal Music Corp.)

Lily of the Valley
Lily of the Valley
Lily of the Valley

They called her Lily of the Valley
And she lived beside the river
The youngest of her sisters
And the prettiest of them all
She was courted by the men in town
She could have married anyone
The one she made her husband
Was the handsomest of all.

They were married in a chapel
Lily bore him seven children
And every night he put her down
And made her feel ashamed.

He took the face she used to wear
And put a look of sorrow there
The more he made her suffer
The more she felt to blame

No more tears Lily
Don't cry anymore
Tears of yours won't fall another time.
Don't cry Lilly
We know how you've tried
Fighting for your life was not a crime.

One night Lily turned to him
Before he raised his hand to her
One more time she said, and not again
He laughed and threw another punch
The blow knocked Lily to the floor,
Somehow she grabbed the kitchen knife
And stabbed her husband dead.

The jury they decided it was murder in the first degree
They said she had provoked him
With her wild and wicked talk.
They hanged her by the river
Where so many times she wandered
And left her children motherless
In sorrow and in shock.

No more tears Lily
Don't cry anymore
Tears of yours won't fall another time.
Don't cry Lilly
We know how you've tried
Fighting for your life was not a crime.

A soldier in a uniform is meant to kill the enemy
But Lilly in her own defense was framed to take the fall
Her children watched their father beat their mother all too often
The battlefields of families are the saddest of them all.

The willow weeps for Lily
As its branches touch the water
The wind is crying, "Lily"
As it sighs along the shore
The river's singing "Lily --
We all know that you are innocent"
You were promised marriage
But you had to fight a war.

No more tears Lily
Don't cry any more
Tears of yours won't fall another time.
Don't cry Lily
We know how you tried
Fighting for your life was not a crime.

Lily of the Valley
Lily of the Valley
Lily of the Valley

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