Lyr ADD: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'

Subject: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: GUEST,Kada
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 12:34 AM

Hello. I'm trying to find the lyrics for a song called "Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'". It's attributed to Robert Archibald Smith (1780-1829). I have it on a compilation put together by the ABC(Australian Broadcasting Commission) called From Winter's Stillness. It is a hauntingly beautiful piece using just a wooden flute and a Celtic harp and sung by a soprano called Custer LaRue. I can only make out some of the lyrics. I would love to get the entire lyrics. Can anyone help? Thanks.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: nutty
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 03:31 AM

The lyrics ( which were actually written by Robert Tannahill can be found here ......Gloomy Winter's now awa'

Smith wrote the tune.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: masato sakurai
Date: 22 Feb 02 - 06:35 AM

The lyrics of Connemara's "Gloomy Winter's Now Away" on Beyond The Horizon are by Robert Tannahill.

~Masato

Subject: Lyr Add: GLOOMY WINTER'S NOW AWA' (Robt Tannahill)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 23 Feb 02 - 09:01 PM

Copied from "English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14." At Bartleby.com

GLOOMY WINTER'S NOW AWA'
(Robert Tannahill (1774–1810) )

Gloomy winter's now awa',
Saft the westlan' breezes blaw,
'Mang the birks o' Stanley-shaw
The mavis sings fu' cheerie, O!
Sweet the crawflower's early bell
Decks Gleniffer's dewy dell,
Blooming like thy bonnie sel',
My young, my artless dearie, O!

Come, my lassie, let us stray
O'er Glenkilloch's sunny brae,
Blithely spend the gowden day
'Midst joys that never weary, O!
Towering o'er the Newton wuds,
Laverocks fan the snaw-white cluds,
Siller saughs, wi' downy buds,
Adorn the banks sae briery, O!

Round the sylvan fairy nooks
Feath'ry breckans fringe the rocks,
'Neath the brae the burnie jouks,
And ilka thing is cheerie, O!
Trees may bud, and birds may sing,
Flowers may bloom, and verdure spring,
Joy to me they canna bring,
Unless wi' thee, my dearie, O!

[Laverocks=larks, siller saughs=silver willows, breckans=brakes, jouks=dodges, ilka=each.]

A slightly different version has already been posted in an old thread here. That version, copied from the Tannahill Weavers' site, differs mainly in spelling and in dividing the poem into 2 stanzas of 12 lines, instead of 3 stanzas of 8 lines.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 24 Feb 02 - 04:28 AM

You do realise what you did don't you?

No sooner do you start a thread about the end of winter, than the snow starts falling!! Half of Britain is snowbound, and yet, here in the sprawling metrolopis that is London, not even a frost.... My little bratling got given a sled her granddad made, yesterday. She's dying to take it out, she sees the rest of Britain covered in white stuff and is wailing because it isn't even frosty outside....

I hold you personally responsible for the fact that it's snowing everywhere else!! (*BG*)

LTS

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 16 Feb 03 - 08:31 PM

If the score is needed please PM me.

Regards, John

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: GUEST,AHD in Canberra
Date: 04 Mar 03 - 10:42 PM

John,
      I have a copy of the score (in a 19thC. book pub. by John Cameron, Glasgow) but wouldn't mind looking at another version. Is your score in a published collection?

    AHD

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: masato sakurai
Date: 05 Mar 03 - 06:10 AM

The score is in John Greig's Scots Minstrelsie, vol. 1, but it's not Connemara's tune.

~Masato

Subject: Lyr Add: GLOOMY WINTER'S NO AWA (Fred Gosbee)
From: GUEST,Julia
Date: 05 Mar 03 - 10:33 PM

Here in Maine:

Gloomy Winter's NO awa'
(by Fred Gosbee)


Gloomy winter's no awa
Snell the nor'land wind does blaw
Noo ance mair my pipes tae thaw
I fire my wee-bit torch-i-o

Tho' we pit them in wi' care
There's a pairt wha maun bide bare
Sae wi' mony a winze an' swear
I squattle 'neath the porch-i-o

I maun gae oot altho I ken
The wather's minus twintie-yin
Wi' snaw an gowstie wheeplin wind;
Hit disnae please me well-i-o

This comes o me ilka year
Yet ae kynd howp I culyie dear
Whan I quat this mortal sphere
There's nae gealt pipes in hell-i-o

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: Ptarmigan
Date: 27 Dec 18 - 07:07 AM

I'm sure most folks here realise that Smith didn't write the tune to this song at all, but rather he adapted the air of an old Strathspey -

Lord Balgonie's Favourite ( Lord Balgownie's Favourite ):
https://tunearch.org/wiki/Lord_Balgonie%27s_Favorite

Cheers,
Dick

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: Jack Campin
Date: 27 Dec 18 - 08:59 AM

The earliest form of the tune is the march of the Cordwainers' Guild, published by Aird in 1778. The strathspey form was by someone else a bit later - I have the full details in my "Embro, Embro" pages. Lord Balgonie's Favourite was the title the Gows used when they plagiarized it (presumably because Balgonie was paying).

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 27 Dec 18 - 12:00 PM

The tune has recently come up on another thread as being the theme tune to the film "The Piano", tho without the above attributions! It's as near as dammit the same tune.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: leeneia
Date: 27 Dec 18 - 02:14 PM

A couple or three years ago I was intrgued by this song and went to YouTube to listen to performances. Every one did the song as if it were a dirge.

Just because a song is minor doesn't mean it's about a tragedy. If you marry the words to the tune, then the topic of the song is spring and by implication, getting out of the hovel and into the woods and making love outdoors. Forget the tragic tone and make the song affectionate, beguiling and caressing. How exactly? Use your imagination, and your fingers will follow.

Come, my lassie, let us stray
O'er Glenkilloch's sunny brae,
Blithely spend the gowden day
'Midst joys that never weary, O!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: GUEST,Terray
Date: 27 Dec 18 - 02:50 PM

I like Billy Ross' take on it-
Gloomy Winter

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: leeneia
Date: 28 Dec 18 - 06:53 PM

I like it too. Thanks.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: leeneia
Date: 30 Dec 18 - 09:54 AM

I esp. like to play the video while reading the words posted above. Otherwide I'd have no idea what he was singing about. Here's where Windows' tiling feature comes in handy.

If you don't speak Scots, try it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Dec 20 - 07:49 PM

Sorry to reanimate an old thread, but I was doing a search to see if anyone had tabbed Billy Ross's version of Gloomy Winter (mentioned above) and I guess this was the only reference to it I found. Anyway, in case any guitar playing fans of Billy's arrangement would be interested in playing it, I just tabbed it today. As ever there are a few places where the vocal masked the guitar making it hard to hear exact notes, but it was easy enough to guess them. I tabbed it in DADGAD in 2/4, it's played with a capo on the 2nd fret. Here's a link to the pdf file of the tab. Hope it's OK to post it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: leeneia
Date: 24 Dec 20 - 10:43 AM

Thanks, Guest. That was nice of you.

When I first encountered this work, I went to YouTube and listened to various performances. IMHO, people play it too slowly and sadly. Even though it's minor, it's not a dirge.

If you think of it as Lord Balgonie's Favorite, it's a dance tune. If you link Tannahill's lyrics to it in your mind, it's the affectionate crooning of a swain wanting to get his girlie out of the house and somewhere private. Either way, it's not sad.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: gillymor
Date: 24 Dec 20 - 01:04 PM

Very well done, Guest, thanks.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: GUEST,Rory
Date: 28 Dec 22 - 07:12 PM

Gloomy Winter's Now Awa' may have been written by Tannahill in about 1808, at a time when he befriended the composer Robert Archibald Smith who set some of his songs.

An early printing in:
The Scottish minstrel: a valuable selection of popular songs,
Printed & Published by OLIVER & BOYD, 1814, pp.74-76

Gloomy Winter's now awa'


Tannahill's friend, the composer R. A. Smith arranged the lyrics to the air "Lord Balgownie's Favourite" in about 1808.

Mr Smith tells how a lady of Smith’s acquaintance expressed a wish that there were words to accompany “Lord Balgownie’s Favourite”, a tune of which she was fond. Smith asked Tannahill to write something for the air, and this was done within a few days.

When Mr Smith had played the completed song for the lady, she begged him to invite the author to the house. He had to employ deceit to get Tannahill “to enter the company of people above his own station of life.” Tannahill’s initial discomfort was extreme, but “after a cheerful glass or two” he became “tolerably communicative.”


Tannahill's first publication was in 1804 or 1805 in a literary magazine in Edinburgh -- its title has never (at least to 1876) been satisfactorily identified. His next publication seems to have been in another unidentified magazine in England. It seems logical that he must have published more extensively than this in 1804, as 17 of his poems were included in a pair of Glasgow publications of 1805 and 1806--"The Selector" and "The Glena," both of which, as their names suggest, were "gleanings" from other publications. In any case, from then on Tannahill was published regularly, in "The Paisley Repository", "The Nightingale", "The Caledonian Musical Repository", Miller's "Paisley Repository", the "Scots Magazine", and other publications.

In 1807 he obtained enough subscribers for his one book, which sold out within weeks: The soldier's return: a Scottish interlude, with other poems and songs, by Robert Tannahill, 1807.

.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Gloomy Winter's Now Awa'
From: leeneia
Date: 29 Dec 22 - 01:51 PM

Thanks, Rory. That's interesting.