Looking for song-Look back all the green valley

Subject: Lyr Req: Looking for this song
From: GUEST,Kudzuman
Date: 11 Aug 10 - 11:55 PM

Looking for a song that this is part of:

Now our days are dwindling down
The fresh green leaves have turned all brown
Look back, look back, ????
Look back all the green valley.

Thanks in advance Mudcatters!!!

Kudzuman

Subject: RE: Looking for song-Look back all the green valley
From: Joe Offer
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 01:43 AM

Hmmmm. Well, there's a book titled Look Back All the Green Valley. The author, Fred Chappell, seems to like to use song titles as titles for his books. I wonder if there's a connection.

-Joe-

---

The book does contain two verses:

Like the sunset's fading rays
The happy times are gone all away
Look back, look back, the Maytime days
Look back all the green valley.

The time is gone that was so sweet
And never another shall we meet.
Look back, look back, the Maytime days
Look back all the green valley.

Is that the same song?
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Looking for song-Look back all the green valley
From: GUEST,oaktree
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 06:18 AM

Now our days are dwindling down
The fresh green leaves have turned all brown
Look back, look back, the Maytime days
Look back all the green valley.

Yet oh my darling think of me
When you are in that far countree
The wonders there so strange to see.
Look back all the green valley

Look back look back the time will come
When you and I are past and gone.

From a google books search

Also says "sung by the New Briar Rose Ramblers" on the previous page.

Subject: RE: Looking for song-Look back all the green valley
From: GUEST,oaktree
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 06:23 AM

There's an essay about Chappell online which discusses the scene in the book:

'So Jess and his sister Mitzi have a picnic, inviting all the good Green Valley folk, serving plenty of food and providing the music of the New Briar Rose Ramblers (Aunt Sam's reconstituted band). The music is fine and the food delicious, and when the festivities come to a close, Joe Robert reads his father's "tongue in cheek" will (which gives him the last laugh at the school board, the paper company, and the religious hypocrites and sundry mean folk of the valley). The will puts many of the events and most of the villains of the past three Kirkman books in fine cosmic, as well as comic, perspective. Then Jess does the only "fair" thing he can think of—"draws names" to see who will host their mom and dad in eternity, though his own good "will" has already rigged the drawing so that, appropriately, the down-to-earth and simple Irelands win Annie Barbara and Joe Robert. Afterward, as the community listens to the New Briar Rose Ramblers' rendition of "Look Back All the Green Valley," Harley the mandolin player voices the sentiment that Chappell has expressed in each of the previous Kirkman books--"It's the songs that keep us alive--or keep the life worth living, anyhow" '

:-)

Subject: RE: Looking for song-Look back all the green valley
From: Kudzuman
Date: 12 Aug 10 - 10:50 AM

Thanks Joe and all the others. I think this is it!!

Kudzuman