Hi

A few years ago, I did some double-sided A4 flyers about different traditional songs, with the song and an illustration on one side, and some historical analysis based on my research on the other. I had easy access to the British Library then ...

Here's the text from the flyer I did from this song. I hope it's useful. I usually keep the formatted text, jpg and detailed notes on a web page and it's here.
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Over The Hills and Far Away

Hark! now the drums beat up again,
For all true soldier gentlemen,
So let us list and march I say,
Go o'er the hills and far away;

Over the hills and o'er the main,
To Flanders, Portugal and Spain,
Queen Ann commands, and we'll obey,
Over the hills and far away.

There's twenty shillings on the drum,
For him that with us freely comes,
'Tis volunteers shall win the day,
Over the hills and far away

Come gentlemen that have a mind,
To serve a Queen that's good and kind;
Come list and enter into pay,
Over the hills and far away

No more from sound of drum retreat,
While Marlborough, and Galway beat,
The French and Spaniards every day,
Over the hills and far away


Over The Hills and Far Away

A robust militaristic song, with a really beautiful tune. The earliest known printing is in the 1706 edition of D'Urfey's "Pills To Purge Melancholy", though an excerpt of this version is also printed in George Farquhar's play "The Recruiting Officer", also first performed in 1706. The song as published in D'Urfey has a clear satirical element and gives the impression of either having been written, or at least altered, for this particular publication.

The song may well have originated as a real recruiting song, and versions with less satirical content were apparently used for this purpose during the 18th Century, our version being one such. Whatever the case may be, these words are clearly associated with the reign of Queen Ann and more particularly with The War Of The Spanish Succession. Interestingly, Marlborough didn't invade Spain, via Portugal, until two years after the song was published. However, the basis of the war, along with existing treaties, made this course of action pretty well inevitable.

Though it's often suggested that the tune is older than D'Urfey's words, it may well not be. Another song to the same tune, "Jockey's Lamentation", appears in the 1719 version of "Pills To Purge Melancholy" and also in some 18th Century broadsides in the Roxburghe collection. The tune is, however, noted in the broadside version as a "Pleasant new playhouse tune". This may simply link it to Farquhar's play, which was performed widely during the 18th Century (and has been ever since).

As well as "Jockey's Lamentation", there have been a number of other songs written to the same tune, usually quoting or parodying "Over The Hills". Of these, the most well known are John Gaye's parody for his Beggar's Opera (1728) "Were I Laid On Greenland's Coast" and the children's nursery rhyme "Tom He Was A Piper's Son", itself printed in the 1719 version of "Pills To Purge Melancholy".

Both song and tune seem to be of English origin, though it spread quickly to the colonies, and particularly to America (Queen Ann's war was also being fought there). An American version of the song was noted in Maryland in 1754, though it first appeared in print in Scotland in 1768. By the end of the century, it had become sufficiently part of the Scottish tradition that both the song and at least one Scottish parody were included in "The Scots Musical Museum" (1804).