This pastoral song is an example of the coyly bawdy Elizabethan song, with a fairly simple text and melody offset by various tricks in the rhythm to keep the total effect from appearing to be too simple. While their songs may be about peasants, the song-writers presumably decided, they wanted to make sure the audience appreciated the fact that the composers were not peasants!

The story in the text is straightforward—Bessie is sleeping in her bedroom, her lover, Jamie, comes in and begins to kiss and caress her, while she pretends to remain sleeping. "First a soft kiss he doth take/she lay still and would not wake/Then his hands learned to woo/ She dreamt not what he would do/but still slept, while he smiled/ to see love by sleep beguiled/Jamie then began to play/Bessie as one buried lay/Gladly still through this sleight/Deceived in her own deceit/ And since this trance begin/She sleeps every afternoon."

The music is appropriately light and sparkling, and, as mentioned above, the occasional rhythmic tricks and variations keep the AABB rhyme scheme from becoming plodding or heavy.

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