3095)  THE SEASONS   This was transcribed from a Loreena McKennitt record.  Ms. McKennitt rarely bothers to acknowledge her sources, and described this one only as "traditional English, 19th century".  The song turns up on broadsides, but so far as I know, the only published example with a matching text from a traditional source with a tune is the set noted by W.A. Barrett at Shoreham, Sussex, in the late C19th; it was published in his English Folk-Songs (1891) and re-printed in Roy Palmer's Everyman's Book of English Country Songs (1979), which is presumably where Ms. McKennitt got it (?).  Midi made from the notation in Palmer's book.  I've only heard a short sound sample of the McKennitt recording, and she seems to have fiddled around with the tune rather a lot, perhaps in an attempt to make it more romantic or ethereal, but I think that it's the same one.  Anyway, it's the traditional tune, whatever the airy-fairy faction have done to it in the meantime...

A few corrections to the transcription:

Verse 1, line 4: doth appear
V 1, line 8: That St. Valentine's Day it forth do bring.

V2, line 6: shady grove

V3, line 5: befriended

V4, line 1: song and tale

Ms. McKennitt has omitted two whole seasons, making for a rather short year.  The missing six months are as follows:

Then cometh Summer, and then to each beholder
The fields are bedecked with hay and corn.
The mower he goes forth with a scythe upon his shoulder
And his bottle of beer so early in the morn.
Then harvest days, when everyone must labour and must swelter,
The reaper, the mower, the farmer comes along
To cut down the corn and to lay it in the shelter,
And at night drink a health with a merry song.

Next cometh Winter when outdoor work's suspended;
The thatcher and the thresher go to work in the barn,
Their coats new and thick, or with flannel neatly mended,
Each follows his task to keep himself warm.
'Tis very cold and pinching, the air is fresh and chilly,
All streams they are bound up with ice and by frost.
All nature seems decayed instead of reviving,
The beauty of all things appears to be lost.