Origins: In the Valley Watching Cattle

Subject: RE: Origins: In the Valley Watching Cattle
From: GUEST,Maya
Date: 03 Mar 24 - 04:11 AM

I have been looking around for this song. I am a student of a waldorf school too, and I was taught this song by a volunteer teacher who had supposedly come from the US or Germany. He had this exact handwritten score and he had given us printouts of it too. He played the guitar along with it. He was pretty old, but not too old. This melody often plays in my head and I have been trying to find out where it's from.

Subject: RE: Origins: In the Valley Watching Cattle
From: Joe Offer
Date: 23 Nov 19 - 12:50 AM

I found a recording here:

https://soundcloud.com/cdemilo

The performance is by "Mr. D," Clovis De Milo of Seattle, Washington. Apparently, he is or was associated with the Seattle Waldorf School.

The song is not in my copy of The Waldorf Song Book, by Brian Masters (Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1987)

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Origins: In the Valley Watching Cattle
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Nov 19 - 07:56 AM

I also learned this song in school (UK early 2000's) but it was a ~60 year old US teacher who taught it. No idea where she got it from though. Fairly certain I have the sheet music hidden away somewhere.

Subject: RE: Origins: In the Valley Watching Cattle
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Jul 13 - 12:05 PM

We learnt this at school in the 1950's if that's any help - was supposedly Russian in origin - at least that is what we were told then.

Subject: RE: Origins: In the Valley Watching Cattle
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 03:39 PM

Doesen't have any Maoist or other connotation that I can see. A nice little song.
The 'us' code indicates United States for the origin.

So far haven't found anything.

Subject: Origins: In the Valley Watching Cattle
From: GUEST,AndyJames
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 12:15 PM

So a choir teacher teaches me this song which he says is "in the folk tradition" and now I'm teaching it to children. But Google doesn't tell me anything about it. What kind of folk song doesn't have Google on its back?

Anyway, here are the lyrics:

In the valley watching cattle
There I heard the sounds of battle
And I found a four-leaf clover
Hiding in the yellow grass

And I found a four-leaf clover
Hiding in the yellow grass

Tell me, tell me, four-leaf clover
If the war will soon be over
Then I'll run to meet my father
Riding over the mountain pass

Then I'll run to meet my father
Riding over the mountain pass

Pigeon, pigeon by the fountain
Fly across the snowy mountain
Take this ribbon to my father
Tell him that it comes from me

Take this ribbon to my father
Tell him that it comes from me

Father, father, brave and clever
Drive the foe across the river
Turn around and come back quickly
Then so happy we shall be

Turn about and come back quickly
Then so happy we shall be

The only reference I found is this pdf of a handwritten score.

Help! Am I teaching schoolchildren a Maoist ballad?