Thread #42811 Message #622463
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
06-Jan-02 - 09:16 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Farewell to Nova Scotia
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Farewell to novia scotia
[The song] appeared in Creighton and Senior's Traditional Songs of Nova Scotia [1950] (pp.264-265; information from Steve Roud's Folksong Index).
Thread #42811 Message #622481
Posted By: masato sakurai
06-Jan-02 - 09:53 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Farewell to Nova Scotia
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Farewell to novia scotia
Edith Fowke says in The Penguin Book of Canadian Folk Songs (1973, pp. 197-198):
19. Farewell to Nova Scotia
Creighton TSNS [Traditional Songs from Nova Scotia, 1950] 265
This has become the best known of all Nova Scotia songs, partly because the Halifax CBC television쳌@show, 'Singalong Jubilee', used it as a theme, and Catherine McKinnon recorded it. Helen Creighton collected it in the 1930s from half a dozen singers in the Petpeswick and Chezzetcook districts, some twenty-five miles east of Halifax: they told her that it was formerly sung in the schools. Mrs Carrie Grover learned it when she was a little girl in Nova Scotia as Adieu to Nova Scotia (208), and Marius Barbeau found another version in Beauce County, Quebec, as On the Banks of Jedddore (CAS 1). The tune is similar to one Cecil Sharp gives for The Lowlands Low.
~Masato
Here are the lyrics from The Penguin Book of Canadian Folk Songs. They are very slightly different from the version in the Digital Tradition.
FAREWELL TO NOVA SCOTIA
The sun was setting in the west,
The birds were singing on ev'ry tree,
All nature seemed inclined for rest,
But still there was no rest for me.Farewell to Nova Scotia, the sea-bound coast,
I grieve to leave my native land,
Let your mountains dark and dreary be,
For when I am far away on the briny ocean tossed,
Will you ever heave a sigh and a wish for me?
I grieve to leave my comrades all,
And my aged parents whom I always held so dear,
And the bonny, bonny lass that I do adore.
The drums they do beat and the wars do alarm,
The captain calls, we must obey,
So farewell, farewell to Nova Scotia's charms,
For it's early in the morning I am far, far away.
I have three brothers and they are at rest,
Their arms are folded on their breast,
But a poor simple sailor just like me
Must be tossed and driven on the dark blue sea.
tune is the same as what's in the DT - Click to play