Anne Briggs - SHE MOVED THROUGH THE FAIR (1963) | Текст песни

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• Anne Briggs
• SHE MOVED THROUGH THE FAIR (1963)

In a letter published in the Irish Times (22 April 1970)[4] Colum claimed that he was the author of all but the final verse. He also described how Herbert Hughes collected the tune and then he, Colum, had kept the last verse of a traditional song and written a couple of verses to fit the music.

One verse was not included in the first publication, in Hughes's Irish Country Songs, published by Boosey & Hawkes in 1909.[5] Colum soon realised that he had not put in the poem the fact that the woman had died before the marriage, and so he wrote the verse that begins: \"The people were saying, that no two were e'er wed, but one had a sorrow that never was said ...\" and sent it on to Hughes, too late for publication in that particular collection. This extra verse was subsequently published in other collections, along with the other three verses. The lyrics were also published in Colum's collection Wild Earth: And Other Poems (1916 ), though their traditional origin is not mentioned there.[6]

No earlier version of the three verses written by Colum has ever been found, so there is little doubt that he is the author of those three verses.

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The traditional singer Paddy Tunney relates[7] how Colum \"wrote\" the song after returning from a literary gathering in Donegal with Herbert Hughes and others. Tunney suggests, however, that it would be more accurate to say that Colum simply added additional lyrics, not the melody, to an original traditional song that by then had generated many variations throughout Ireland.

Tunney himself collected one version from an Irish singer called Barney McGarvey. This version was called \"I Once Had a True Love\". The opening four lines are reminiscent of \"She Moved Through the Fair\" and the second four lines are unmistakably similar.

The words to the first verse are:

I once had a sweet-heart, I loved her so well
I loved her far better than my tongue could tell
Her parents they slight me for my want of gear
So adieu to you Molly, since you are not here
I dreamed last night that my true love came in
So softly she came that her feet made no din
She stepped up to me and this she did say
It will not be long, love, till our wedding day

*
The remaining two verses are quite different. Tunney also points to a version of the song that he learned from his mother, who called it \"My Young Love Said to Me\". The first verse is virtually the same as Colum's, but the remaining three verses are quite different:
*
My young love said to me, my mother won't mind
And my father won't slight you for your lack of kind
And she went away from me and this she did say:
It will not be long now till our wedding day.
She went away from me and she moved through the fair
Where hand-slapping dealers' loud shouts rent the air
The sunlight around her did sparkle and play
Saying it will not be long now till our wedding day.

When dew falls on meadow and moths fill the night
When glow of the greesagh on hearth throws half-light
I'll slip from the casement and we'll run away
And it will not be long love till our wedding day
According to promise at midnight he rose
But all that he found was the downloaded clothes
The sheets they lay empty 'twas plain for to see
And out of the window with another went she.

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