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"Fare Thee Well" (sometimes known as "The Turtle Dove") is an 18th-century English folk ballad, listed as number 422 in the Roud Folk Song Index. In the song, a lover bids farewell before setting off on a journey, and the lyrics include a dialogue between the lovers.
The first published version of the song appeared in Roxburghe Ballads dated 1710; the lyrics were there given the title "The True Lover's Farewell". The song was traditionally sung to a range of different tunes.
In 1907, the composer and folk-song scholar Ralph Vaughan Williams recorded David Penfold, an innkeeper from Rusper, Sussex, singing "Turtle Dove", and the recording is available online via the British Library Sound Archive. [1]
"Fare Thee Well" shares several lyrics which parallel those of Robert Burns's "A Red, Red Rose". The lyrics are also strikingly similar to a folk song titled, "My Dear Mary Ann" [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] that dates back to the mid-19th century. Similarities include the meter and rhyme scheme, as well as the alternative title of "Ten Thousand Miles". Lyrical similarities include the opening line, "Fare thee well my own true love", "Ten thousand miles or more" (word-for-word matches), and the question of seeing a dove or other bird crying for its love. The subjects of the songs are practically identical: Lovers mourning their separation and longing to return to one another.
In 1919, Vaughan Williams wrote an arrangement of the song, entitled "The Turtle Dove", for solo baritone (later re-arranged for solo and SATB choir). [8] [9] Tia Blake released a version of the song similar to Vaughan Williams' arrangement and the original phonograph recording on her album Folk Songs & Ballads: Tia Blake and Her Folk-group. [10]
The song has been recorded by Nic Jones, Joan Baez on her 1960 debut album, Mary Black, Eliza Carthy, Chad & Jeremy, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Liam Clancy, Marianne Faithfull, Burl Ives, Molina and Roberts, Bonny Light Horseman, Pete Seeger and June Tabor.
Mary Chapin Carpenter's version was used in the movie Fly Away Home (1996). [11] The King's Singers performed and recorded an arrangement of The Turtle Dove by their baritone Philip Lawson (composer and arranger)
The following lyrics were adapted by Vaughan Williams from the phonograph recording of David Penfold.
Fare you well my dear, I must be gone
And leave you for a while
If I roam away I'll come back again
Though I roam ten thousand miles, my dear
Though I roam ten thousand miles
So fair though art my bonny lass
So deep in love am I
But I never will prove false to the bonny lass I love
Till the stars fall from the sky my dear
Till the stars fall from the sky
The sea will never run dry, my dear
Nor the rocks never melt with the sun
But I never will prove false to the bonny lass I love
Till all these things be done my dear
Till all these things be done
O yonder doth sit that little turtle dove
He doth sit on yonder high tree
A making a moan for the loss of his love
As I will do for thee my dear
As I will do for thee
"Scarborough Fair" is a traditional English ballad. The song lists a number of impossible tasks given to a former lover who lives in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. The "Scarborough/Whittingham Fair" variant was most common in Yorkshire and Northumbria, where it was sung to various melodies, often using Dorian mode, with refrains resembling "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" and "Then she'll be a true love of mine." It appears in Traditional Tunes by Frank Kidson published in 1891, who claims to have collected it from Whitby.
"Barbara Allen" is a traditional folk song that is popular throughout the English-speaking world and beyond. It tells of how the eponymous character denies a dying man's love, then dies of grief soon after his untimely death.
"Lily of the West" is a traditional British and Irish folk song, best known today as an American folk song, listed as number 957 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The American version is about a man who travels to Louisville and falls in love with a woman named Mary, Flora or Molly, the eponymous Lily of the West. He catches Mary being unfaithful to him, and, in a fit of rage, stabs the man she is with, and is subsequently imprisoned. In spite of this, he finds himself still in love with her. In the original version, the Lily testifies in his defense and he is freed, though they do not resume their relationship.
"The Bonnie Earl o' Moray" is a popular Scottish ballad, which may date from as early as the 17th century.
"A Red, Red Rose" is a 1794 song in Scots by Robert Burns based on traditional sources. The song is also referred to by the title "(Oh) My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose" and is often published as a poem. Many composers have set Burns' lyric to music, but it gained worldwide popularity set to the traditional tune "Low Down in the Broom"
"The Raggle Taggle Gypsy" (Roud 1, Child 200), is a traditional folk song that originated as a Scottish border ballad, and has been popular throughout Britain, Ireland and North America. It concerns a rich lady who runs off to join the gypsies (or one gypsy). Common alternative names are "Gypsy Davy", "The Raggle Taggle Gypsies O", "The Gypsy Laddie(s)", "Black Jack David" (or "Davy") and "Seven Yellow Gypsies".
The Bonnie Lass o' Fyvie is a Scottish folk song about a thwarted romance between a soldier and a girl. Like many folk songs, the authorship is unattributed, there is no strict version of the lyrics, and it is often referred to by its opening line "There once was a troop o' Irish dragoons". The song is also known by a variety of other names, the most common of them being "Peggy-O", "Fennario", and "The Maid of Fife".
"Geordie" is an English language folk song concerning the trial of the eponymous hero whose lover pleads for his life. It is listed as Child ballad 209 and Number 90 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The ballad was traditionally sung across the English speaking world, particularly in England, Scotland and North America, and was performed with many different melodies and lyrics. In recent times, popular versions have been performed and recorded by numerous artists and groups in different languages, mostly inspired by Joan Baez's 1962 recording based on a traditional version from Somerset, England.
"Riddles Wisely Expounded" is a traditional English song, dating at least to 1450. It is Child Ballad 1 and Roud 161, and exists in several variants. The first known tune was attached to it in 1719. The title "Riddles Wisely Expounded" was given by Francis James Child and seems derived from the seventeenth century broadside version "A Noble Riddle Wisely Expounded".
"The Trees They Grow So High" is a Scottish folk song. The song is known by many titles, including "The Trees They Do Grow High", "Daily Growing", "Long A-Growing" and "Lady Mary Ann".
The song "All Around my Hat" is of nineteenth-century English origin. In an early version, dating from the 1820s, a Cockney costermonger vowed to be true to his fiancée, who had been sentenced to seven years' transportation to Australia for theft and to mourn his loss of her by wearing green willow sprigs in his hatband for "a twelve-month and a day", the willow being a traditional symbol of mourning. The song was made famous by Steeleye Span, whose rendition may have been based on a more traditional version sung by John Langstaff, in 1975.
"The Bonny Bunch of Roses" is a folk song written in the 1830s by an unknown balladeer from the British Isles, perhaps with Irish sympathies.
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Lord Saltoun and Auchanachie, is a Scottish folk song.
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Rosemary Lane"is an English folksong: a ballad that tells a story about the seduction of a domestic servant by a sailor. According to Roud and Bishop
"An extremely widespread song, in Britain and America. Its potential for bawdry means that it was popular in male-centred contexts such as rugby clubs, army barracks and particularly in the navy, where it can still be heard, but traditional versions were often collected from women as well as men."
Now o Now I Needs Must Part is a song by the sixteenth-seventeenth-century composer John Dowland. The lyrics, a bittersweet contemplation of love and loss, are anonymous. The song was first published in Dowland's collection First Booke of Songes or Ayres of foure partes with Tableture for the Lute (1597).
The Holmfirth Anthem, also known as Pratty Flowers (sic), Abroad for Pleasure and Through the Groves, is an English choral folk song associated with Yorkshire, especially the rural West Riding, and particularly with the area around Holmfirth.
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References 1-6 are transcribed from the Traditional Ballad Index website listed in "External Links" below
