American Stranger CD : content and reviews [ Ссылка ]

Lyrics & commentary below ....

Adieu, My Lovely Nancy (Trad./Arr. J. Henigan)

One of a number of departed sailor songs printed on ballad sheets in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, "Adieu, My Lovely Nancy" (also known as "The Sailor's Farewell," "Swansea Town," and "The Holy Ground") has been collected in England, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the United States. I learned this version from the Max Hunter Collection. Hunter was a traveling salesman and amateur folksong collector from Springfield, Missouri, who amassed an impressive number of field recordings from the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks. When I was a teenager I learned many songs from the cassette tapes of his collection that were housed in the Springfield Public Library.

Hunter recorded this song in 1959 from Bertha Lauderdale, of Fayetteville, Arkansas. She had learned the song from her grandfather, who, in turn, had learned it from his grandmother, when "he was a young child in Ireland." Since I recorded the song on American Stranger (Waterbug 038), Altan, Jeff Davis, Nancy Conescu, Gerald Trimble, and Pete Coe have all added it to their repertoires. I wish Bertha were alive today to see how many people her grandfather's song has inspired. You can hear Bertha singing this and three other songs by accessing the Hunter Collection at [ Ссылка ]

Adieu, my lovely Nancy,
Ten thousand times adieu,
I'll be thinking of my own true love,
I'll be thinking, dear, of you.

Will you change a ring with me, my love,
Will you change a ring with me?
It will be a token of our love,
When I am far at sea.

When I am far away from home
And you know not where I am,
Love letters I will write to you
From every foreign strand.

When the farmer boys come home at night,
They will tell their girls fine tales
Of all that they've been doing
All day out in the fields;

Of the wheat and hay that they've cut down,
Sure, it's all that they can do,
While we poor jolly, jolly hearts of oak
Must plough the seas all through.

And when we return again, my love,
To our own dear native shore,
Fine stories we will tell to you,
How we ploughed the oceans o'er.

And we'll make the alehouses to ring,
And the taverns they will roar,
And when our money it is all gone,
Sure, we'll go to sea for more.


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