The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #10507   Message #2670035
Posted By: Joe Offer
02-Jul-09 - 03:48 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Now She's Gone (from Jim Kweskin)
Subject: ADD: Flora (The Stormy Winds of Winter)
The Jean Redpath recording of "Farewell He" is on her Folk-Legacy CD, Frae My Ain Countrie.
The Shelley Posen version is "If He's Gone, Let Him Go," from his CD The Old Songs' Home.
There's also a very nice recording on a Folkways album called Mickey Miller Sings American Folk Songs.

Here's the version from Peacock's Songs of the Newfoundland Outports:

FLORA (THE STORMY WINDS OF WINTER)

The stormy winds of winter intend to frost and snow,
The small birds round the centre, and the stormy winds do blow,
You are the girl I choosèd to be my only dear,
But your hard heart is frozen, you've sealed it up I fear.

I went one night to see my love, was treated most scornfully,
I asked her if she would marry but she would not agree.
"The night it is far spent, my love, and almost break of day,
From you I want an answer, my dear what do you say?"

"Oh since you are for changing the old love for the new
It's time for me to ranging the foaming billows through,
I'll go and seek some other young girl where love may have its fill,
This world is wide and lonely, if you won't some other will."

"I'll make my way to Flanders, I'll choose a different life,
And with my bold commander my gun shall be my wife,
And when I do get money to a tavern I will go,
I'll drink a health to Flora although she answered no."


Source: Songs of the Newfoundland Outports, by Kenneth Peacock, pp. 445-446
singer: Mrs. Charlotte Decker, August, 1959