This song is an example of the "Folk Process" where one takes an old folk song or tale and makes it their own by retelling the story, redoing the music, or both. This story comes from an old murder ballad of the Twa Sisters and I've reworked the ending to be a little more subtle and completely changed the music. I tried to retain the "old" sounding lyric construction.

Scarlett's Folly-------------

Mary had hair so black that the night
Did envy where she roamed
But her smile was as bright as the breaking dawn
As it spreads cross the fields in the morn
Fire was the thought that came to mind
When one spied her sister’s mane
And her temper did match the hair on her head
And Scarlett was her name

The sisters were known cross the county wide
For their beauty and their charms
And many a man would’ve given the world
To lay in either sister’s arms

The spring it was in the fullest of bloom
When the sisters dared to spy
The most beautiful man that either had seen
“I’ll have him for mine,” Mary cried
“I think that you’ll not” came Scarlett’s reply
And her temper flared awake
And she pushed her sister into the river
That fed into the lake

Spring did fail and summer waned
Then fall did the winter take
A fiddler walking through the shallows
A discovery did make
He collected the bones found lying there
Took them back to his warm hut
Where he whittled them down for an instrument
A fiddle’s tuning pegs and nut

Scarlett’s wedding the next spring did hail
To the beautiful boy she’d seen
And the fiddler played the reception reels
Cross a meadow of sunny green
But whenever the fiddler played a tune
Whether fast or slow played he
The guests would fall in moans and wails
No dancing would there be