"Hares on the Mountain" (Roud 329) (otherwise titled "Blackbirds and Thrushes", "If All the Young Women", "Nancy Lay Sleeping", "The Knife in the Window", "Shepherd So Bold", "Sally My Dear", "Lightning and Thunder", "Crawling and Creeping" and "Ain't Gonna Do It No More") is an English folk song. Versions of this song have been collected from traditional singers in England, Canada and the USA, and have been recorded by modern folk artists. The English folk singer Shirley Collins (who probably learnt the song from a version collected by Cecil Sharp in Somerset) released a popular version in 1959 which inspired most of the popular renditions, including the recording by Alt-J for the film Bright (2017). Synopsis This song is composed of two distinct parts, "Hares on the Mountain" and "The Knife in the Window", both of which have been collected as distinct songs. It may be that it started life as two different songs which were amalgamated by singers. A third theme, "Crawling and Creeping", apparently an adaptation of the "Knife in the Window" motif, occurs in the American tradition. "Hares on the Mountain" In this theme the singer imagines what would happen if young maidens (or in some cases young men) were transformed into various creatures or plants, and describes the response of the opposite gender: The imagined transformations include hares on the mountain, sheep in the meadow, reeds a'growin', and others. One more modern version goes: There is a nonsense refrain which varies from singer to singer. "Knife in the Window" This section starts as a dialogue between two young lovers, demonstrating his incompetence and her initial caution and subsequent willingness (if somewhat blunt at times): Most versions involve him cutting knots (at her instigation) in either his breeches or her "small things", hence the title: The song usually ends with the couple in bed together: though one version, collected in Virginia from Asa Martin and titled "Lightning and Thunder", ends with the birth of a baby: A number of more explicit versions of this song have been collected under the title "Roll Your Leg Over". "Crawling and Creeping" In this reworking of more risque versions of the song like "Roll Your Leg Over me" the narrator dreams that he "went a-crawling and a-creeping And I crawled in the room where my baby was sleeping". She wakes up and screams, he is arrested and sentenced to nine months