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Subject: Scarborough Settler's Lament (additional info
From: Wendy M. Grossman
Date: 19-Nov-03 - 10:02 AM

I happened to look up the lyrics to Scarborough Settler's Lament today (too lazy to go in the other room and look out the book it's in), basically because I wanted to check my memory of the lyrics, since I hadn't sung it in a while.

I'd like to add the following information to its listing.

It was also recorded by Wendy Grossman on Roseville Fair, 1980, and there's an MP3 of it at http://www.pelicancrossing.net/roseville.htm. I learned it from the Fowke book and also from Wendy Price, of Dewsbury, W. Yorkshire, who learned it when she was living in Canada in the 1960s. The settler who wrote the song undeniably came from the Scottish borders because when I performed it in Annan in the late 1970s, the club organizer took me around and showed me all the landmarks in the song.

wg

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Any other comments or information on the song? Wendy's Website is quite interesting - take a look.
-Joe Offer-

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SCARBOROUGH SETTLER'S LAMENT (DT Lyrics)

Away wi' Canada's muddy creeks
And Canada's fields of pine
Your land of wheat is a goodly land,
But oh, it is not mine
The heathy hill, the grassy date.
The daisy spangled lea, the purling burn and craggy linn, auld
Scotland's glens give me.

Oh, I would like to hear again the lark on Tinny's hill
And see the wee bit gowany that blooms beside the rill.
Like banished Swill who view afar his Alps with longing e'e.
I gaze upon the morning star that shines on my country.

No more I'll win by Eskdale glen or Pentland's craggy comb.
The days can ne'er come back again of thirty years that's gone,
But fancy oft at midnight hour will steal across the sea.
And yestereve, in a pleasant dream, I saw the old country.

Each well-known scene that met my view brought childhood's joys
to mind.
The blackbird sang on Tushey linn the song he sang, 'lang syne.'
But like a dream time flies away, again, the morning came.
And I awoke in Canada, three thousand miles frae hame.

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Whether the Scarborough referred to is the one in the British
Isles or the wasteland near Toronto (known locally as Scarberia)
we don't know.

Fowke, in The Penguin Book of Canadian Folk Songs attributes this to
Sandy Glendenning ca 1840. Tune from Fowke. RG

Recorded by Stan Rogers in 1982 on For the Family, Folk
Tradition, R002.
@Canada @emigrate @home
filename[ SCARSET
TUNE FILE: SCARSET
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DC