The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #107359 Message #3293639
Posted By: Joe Offer
20-Jan-12 - 07:34 PM
Thread Name: Req: Song of Farewell (Now the green leaves grow)
Subject: ADD: Song of Farewell (Now the green leaves grow)
Building on what Jim Dixon posted above from a GoogleBooks snippet, here's the entire song in the two-part version from Silver Burdett. The songbook says this song is Austrian. Anybody have any idea what the original German lyrics are?
The following song, along with musical notation, is contained in Making Music Your Own (Volume 7) By Beatrice Landeck, Silver Burdett Co., 1964, page 214 (1971 edition).
SONG OF FAREWELL
Austrian Folk Song
Collected by Engel Lund
Arranged by Ferdinand Rauter
[English] Words by Ursula Vaughan Williams
Part 1
Now the green leaves grow, tomorrow I must go,
Today I shelter here, then none may know.
In flowers and in garlands I'm clothed today,
Tomorrow without staff I go away.
This must be my farewell. I will not come again.
Nor shall I leave a footprint light as snow or rain.
Friends I must forget, think of me and say
A Paternoster at the end of day.
Amen, amen, amen.
Your words will stand and keep
Their watch and guard around me where I sleep.
Amen, amen,
Your words will stand and keep
Their watch and guard around me where I sleep.
Part 2
Now the green leaves grow, tomorrow I must go,
Today I shelter here, then none may know.
In flowers and in garlands I'm clothed today,
Tomorrow without shoe and staff I go away.
This must be my farewell. I will not come again.
Nor shall I leave a footprint light as snow or rain.
Friends I must forget, O think of me and say
A Paternoster for me at the end of the day.
Amen, amen, amen.
Your words will stand and guard around me where I sleep.
Amen, amen, amen.
Your words will stand and keep
Their watch and guard around me where I sleep.
The source was A Second Book of Folk-Songs, by Engel Lund, published by Oxford University Press in 1961, and apparently also in earlier editions going back at least to 1936.
Anybody have the source book? Ursula Vaughan Williams (1911-2007) was Ralph's wife. She was also president of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.
This page says Ferdinand Rauter (1902-1987) was an Austrian musician who settled in London in the later 1930s. Rauter published a number of collections of folksongs in cooperation with Ursula Vaughan Williams and with Icelandic singer Engel Lund.