Lyr Add: Araby Maid

Subject: Lyr Add: Araby Maid
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Apr 07 - 02:55 AM

I came across this while looking for something else. I thought it might be of interest to somebody, although I don't think I'd recommend singing it in this day and age.
-Joe-

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THE ARABY MAID
(Ord's Bothy songs and Ballads, 1930; p 312)

AWAY on the wings of the wind she flies,
Like a thing of life and light,
And she bounds beneath the eastern skies
And the beauty of the eastern night.

Why so fast flies the bark through the ocean's foam,
Why wings it so speedy a flight?
'Tis an Araby maid who hath left her home
To fly with her Christian knight.

She hath left her sire and her native land,
The land which from childhood she trod;
And hath sworn by the pledge of her beautiful hand
To worship the Christian God.

Then away, away, oh swift be thy flight,
It was death one moment's delay;
For behind there is many a blade gleaming bright,
Then away, away, away.

They are safe in the land where love is divine,
In the land of the free and the brave;
They have knelt at the foot of the holy shrine,
Nought can sever them now but the grave.

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The Traditional Ballad Index Entry for this song:

Araby Maid, The

DESCRIPTION: "Away on the wings of the wind she flies...." "'Tis an Araby maid who hath left her home To fly with her Christian knight." The song tells how she leaves her home and her faith for love, and notes "None can sever them now but the grave."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1930 (Ord)
KEYWORDS: love courting
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Ord, p. 312, "The Araby Maid" (1 text)
Roud #3779
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Turkish Lady" [Laws O26]
cf. "Young Beichan" [Child 53]
Notes: The absence of dialect in this song makes me think it is composed. So does the abject stupidity. - RBW
File: Ord312

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The Ballad Index Copyright 2006 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.

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There are several versions in the Greig-Duncan Collection Volume 5 pp.260-262. They're all more-or-less the same as what I posted above, but Greig-Duncan has a tune. I'll post the tune on request.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Araby Maid
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 08 Apr 07 - 11:09 PM

If you use Google Book Search to search for the opening line of that song, you'll find it in several old anthologies, the oldest of which is The Modern Scottish Minstrel, edited by Charles Rogers, Edinburgh, 1857.

THE ARABY MAID is on page 160. The words are nearly identical to what is posted above.

It is attributed to Rev. Thomas Gordon Torry Anderson (1805-1856) whose biography begins on page 158. It says he wrote THE ARABY MAID in 1833.

Ain't Google wonderful!