This is one of those verses that are truly funny-- not in a sophisticated, understated, ironic way, but almost as part of a slapstick routine. The lover has sent a Messenger with a letter, and the beloved is so enraged at this insolence that she threatens to wring the offender's neck with her own hands. For anybody else, the neck-wringing would be the operative part of her threat, but of course for the lover it's 'with her own hands'. He can't stand the idea that somebody else-- and his own lowly Messenger, to boot-- should get such a treat. So in the second line he protests, and the funniest part is that his rhetoric is exactly that of chivalry. He sounds like someone trying to save a friend from severe punishment by gallantly taking all the guilt on himself. There's nothing in the verse to tell us otherwise (except perhaps the second line's slightly overblown insistence and repetitiveness). But of course, since we know the lover, we know he's really using the rhetoric of a child trying to reclaim a toy from a sibling. In the guise of unselfish gallantry, he's selfishly clamoring for a treat. And what a treat-- the honor of having his neck wrung. It's so absurd, you have to laugh. If we want to get into heavy-duty analysis, we can always consider the relationship between and . The former is based on the idea of 'to do wrong' (Platts p.490), while the latter is derived from : 'diminution; deficiency; defect, something wanting' (Platts p.791). Does the lover also want to emphasize that this wasn't a small, trivial mistake (one that won't happen again), but rather a genuine deficiency or defect (one in need of more serious correction)? In most verses, this kind of thing would be worth thinking about. But in this one-- do we really care? graphics/myfault.jpg