The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #99894 Message #1999070
Posted By: McGrath of Harlow
16-Mar-07 - 06:36 PM
Thread Name: Songs about Whitby??!
Subject: RE: Songs about Whitby??!
1558 wouldn't be a likely year for Henry the Eighth to be doing anything much, since he was long dead by then. 1538 sounds more likely, and it's more or less accurate historically. ............
Here's a song I write about Whitby during a folk week there a few years ago: ^^ Whitby coming home
Perhaps the seagulls woke me, but I could not sleep that night So I walked down to the harbour, to see the harbour lights, And the harbour lights were shining, and the night was calm and clear But that's aniother reason I'll be coming back next year To Whitby in the summer, together or alone, To Whitby, where it's always coming home.
And rising in the morning, I climbed two hundred stairs To sing there in St Mary's, and to listen to the prayers, With the bells so sweetly ringing, and the seagulls wheeling by, And high above the harbour we were singing in the sky In Whitby in the summer, together or alone, In Whitby, where it's always coming home.
With the singing and the dancing, and the music in the streets, And the welcome always shining in the faces that you meet, Why, Whitby in the summer is like moving through a dream, But there's something there in Whitby that is deeper than it seems. In Whitby in the summer, together or alone, In Whitby, where it's always coming home.
And in the Seaman's Mission, I sat and drank my tea And those sailormen up on the walls were looking down at me And standing in the evening on the cliffs above the shore I seemed to see those little ships go sailing out once more Go sailing out from Whitby, together and alone And some of them would never make it home.
And all through the streets of Whitby you can hear the seagulls cry Don't they say they are the spirits of lost sailors long gone by? So when we sing the old songs, it is more than just a game, We wake the memories of the dead, and call them home again To Whitby in the summer, together or alone, To Whitby, where it's always coming home.