Help with a song about trees please!

Subject: Help with a song about trees please!
From: GUEST,Rufus Bear
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 08:17 PM

Hi,
Some, many, lots years ago, I heard someone sing a song about trees, and the only part I can remember is the first few lines, which go,

'There's Alder in the valley,
There's Ash upon the plain,
Birch stood alone, before the others came..

I've tried googling all and every combo of the lyrics I can retmebr , and nothing!!
Would anyone happen to have ever hear this song, and know the rest of it please? It's driving me bonkers!

Thankyou so much,

Rufus

Subject: RE: Help with a song about trees please!
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jul 18 - 07:16 AM

Perhaps it's something derived from the mediaeval Welsh poem 'Cad Goddeu'?

Subject: RE: Help with a song about trees please!
From: GUEST,Gallus Moll (away from home!)
Date: 01 Jul 18 - 11:29 AM

There is / are poems about the qualities of different woods, for uses and/or burning in the fire - think one might be from Roman times?

Subject: RE: Help with a song about trees please!
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 01 Jul 18 - 05:27 PM

Trees
BY JOYCE KILMER
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Subject: RE: Help with a song about trees please!
From: Jack Campin
Date: 01 Jul 18 - 06:06 PM

The order (with birch first) suggests the Celtic tree calendar as reinvented by Robert Graves in The White Goddess. Though Graves himself would have written with more style. So I suspect it was written by a pagan follower of Graves.

Subject: Lyr Add: A TREE SONG / OAK AND ASH AND THORN
From: GUEST,Julia L
Date: 01 Jul 18 - 11:14 PM

maybe an additional verse to this song by Kipling?

A TREE SONG
By Rudyard Kipling, from Puck of Pook’s Hill (London, Macmillan and Co., 1924, page 31)

Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.
Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good Sirs
(All of a Midsummer morn)!
Surely we sing no little thing,
In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Oak of the Clay lived many a day,
Or ever Æneas began;
Ash of the Loam was a lady at home,
When Brut was an outlaw man;
Thorn of the Down saw New Troy Town
(From which was London born);
Witness hereby the ancientry
Of Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Yew that is old in churchyard mould,
He breedeth a mighty bow;
Alder for shoes do wise men choose,
And beech for cups also.
But when ye have killed, and your bowl is spilled,
And your shoes are clean outworn,
Back ye must speed for all that ye need,
To Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Ellum she hateth mankind, and waiteth
Till every gust be laid,
To drop a limb on the head of him,
That anyway trusts her shade:
But whether a lad be sober or sad,
Or mellow with ale from the horn,
He will take no wrong when he lieth along
’Neath Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,
Or he would call it a sin;
But—we have been out in the woods all night
A-conjuring Summer in!
And we bring you news by word of mouth—
Good news for cattle and corn—
Now is the Sun come up from the South,
With Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good Sirs
(All of a Midsummer morn)!
England shall bide till Judgment Tide,
By Oak, and Ash and Thorn!

Subject: RE: Help with a song about trees please!
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 03:41 AM

My first thought was also Oak and Ash & Thorn, but it didn't really fit with the question.
I notice the above posting gives a copyright tag to "Golden Hind Music". This is a poem by Kipling, who died in 1936, so no copyright applies.

Subject: RE: Help with a song about trees please!
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 04:54 AM

Jack Campin, a lot of Graves's speculations on a Celtic tree calendar came out of his analysis of the poem 'Cad Goddeu', mentioned earlier in the thread...

Subject: RE: Help with a song about trees please!
From: DaveRo
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 05:36 AM

That copyright line appears on all Golden Hind's pages so I think it was inadvertantly copied here. It's clear it doesn't apply to the song.

I notice that they - John Roberts & Tony Barrand - have a record entitled 'Mellow with Ale from the Horn'. It says: " Our title comes from Rudyard Kipling's poem Oak, Ash & Thorn, which was recently set to music by Peter Bellamy. When he visited us in Marlboro, Peter made a point of making the trip to Brattleboro, just down the hill from us, to visit the house where Kipling lived during his four-year stay in Vermont."

As for the original question, I'd say it's not referring to England. We don't really have 'plains'.

Subject: RE: Help with a song about trees please!
From: Susan of DT
Date: 02 Jul 18 - 06:13 AM

While the original poster asked about one particular song, the thread has been more generic. The DT has a keyword of "tree" with 20 songs so labeled, mostly of the tribe of oak and ash and some other tree (Ambletown, North Country Maid, Raspberry Lane, etc.)

Subject: RE: Help with a song about trees please!
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Jul 18 - 11:31 PM

But so it doesn't get lost, let me repeat the lyrics of the requested song:

There's Alder in the valley,
There's Ash upon the plain,
Birch stood alone, before the others came..

So far, we haven't come up with anything close. I did what I could to search school songbooks, and had no luck.

Subject: RE: Help with a song about trees please!
From: Iains
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 09:21 AM

Interesting thread. Birch would be the fiirst coloniser (I believe)
Dec 24- Jan 20
LORE:    The Birch is self-propagating (as is the year). It is the earliest Tree to put out leaves (with the exception of the Elder). Its bark is "snow white". Birch rods drive out "evil", and The Old Year. Birch was used for cradle wood.

http://feraferia.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=102:tree-alphabet-calendar&catid=48:ancient-ideas&Itemi

is the Order of Battle in the Cad Goddeu:
Birch Rowan Alder Willow Ash Whitethorn Oak Holly Hazel Wild-apple
Vine Ivy J Reed Blackthorn Elder[BroomPalm Fir JGorse Heath Poplar Yew Mistletoe [Furze)Privet Woodbine Pine

Could be a total wild goose chase but the White Goddess is an interesting read.

Subject: RE: Help with a song about trees please!
From: DaveRo
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 12:22 PM

Of those three lines, those about alder and birch are appropriate. But my idea of a 'plain' - apart from it being big and flat - is not somewhere I would associate with ash trees - or indeed any large trees.

Maybe they grow on the Great Gromboolian Plain.

Subject: RE: Help with a song about trees please!
From: Iains
Date: 04 Jul 18 - 04:57 PM

Perhaps if you incorporate 'battle or battle of the trees' you may strike lucky.
the link below follows a related theme as the lines posted


https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/toriamos/battleoftrees.html

Good Luck!