Farewell to Tarwaithie
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sea chantey
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
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Lyrics:
Farewell to Tarwathie, adieu Mormond Hill;
Dear land of my fathers, I bid you farewell;
I’m bound for Greenland, and ready to sail
In hopes to find riches in hunting the whale.
Adieu to my comrades, a while we must part;
Likewise the dear girlie who has won my heart;
The cold ice on Greenland my love will not chill;
The longer my absence, the stronger love’s thrill.
Awhile I must leave you and go to the sea;
Wish luck to the bonnie ship that I’m going wi’;
And when I am sailing upon the wide main,
Be cheerful and happy till I come again.
Our ship is well rigged and ready to sail,
Our crew they are anxious to follow the whale
Where the icebergs float and the stormy winds blow,
Where the land and the ocean are covered with snow.
The cold land of Greenland is barren and bare;
No seed-time or harvest is ever known there;
The birds here sing sweetly on mountain and dale,
But there’s nary a birdie to sing to the whale.
There’s no habitation for man to live there;
The king of that country’s the fierce Greenland bear;
There’ll be no temptation to tarry long there,
With our ship bumper-full we’ll homeward repair.
This Scottish song is not actually a chantey but it is included because of it was composed by<br> a whalerman-poet, George Scroggie of New Deer in Buchan (Scotland). He<br> went whaling in the Arctic in the 1850s and was later a farmer and a miller.<br> His lyrics (reprinted from Gavin Greig, Folk-Song of the North-East, (1914) are sung to the<br> traditional English air "Blow Ye Winds Westerly". The melody seems to be related to the "Wagoner's<br> Lad" family of tunes.<br> Tarwathie is in Aberdeenshire, northwest of the whaling port of Peterhead.<br> It appears in the Roud Folksong Collection as #2562.<br> It was recorded by<br> Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd on Thar She Blows! (1956),<br> A.L. Lloyd on Leviathan! Ballads & Songs of the Whaling Trade (1967),<br> Danny Spooner on A Wench, a Whale and a Pint of Good Ale,<br> Judy Collins (accompanied by humpback whales) on Whales and Nightingales (1970) and<br> Colors of the Day (1972) and<br> Ewan MacColl on As We Were A-Sailing (1971).<br> It appears in the Roud Folksong Collection as #2562.<br> It was printed in <br> Greig's Folk-Song in Buchan and Folk-Song of the North-East (1963),<br> Greig's The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection, Volume 1 (1981),<br> Frank's Sea Chanteys and Sailors' Songs (2000).<br>
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