In A Fair Country

from The Wilderness Yet by The Wilderness Yet

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about

Rosie wrote this song while exploring the vast wealth of folklore surrounding our less renowned native trees. Once so familiar to the people of this country, their uses and stories have all but disappeared with our detachment from the natural world. The chorus is a traditional floating verse appearing in many songs in different guises – here adapted for a time when Britain is still being stripped of its woodlands.

lyrics

The yew in the churchyard she sighs and she groans
Under the weight of old sins and old bones
She’ll find no relief for she cannot die
Only suck a life from the dead that in their graves live

The oak and the ash and the apple tree
Would blossom and bloom in a fair country...

We sigh for the summer as we summon the May
Seeking the favour of fortune and fey
But less now she blushes in hedges and groves
Curse he that harms hawthorn as she blossoms and grows

The willows that flank the river bank side
Watch lives wax and wain with the pull of the tide
From cradle to coffin they’ll weave and they’ll spin
And the willows weep low for lost love and lost kin

Alder, oh alder her feet in the water
Flame in the forge and stone in the stream
Though the blacksmith the dyer and the cobbler court her
She shields in her shady carrs, her Robin the Green

And over the land man strips barren and bare
Where the spirits that linger are death and despair
Sweeps the Lady of Birch with her selvren skin
And all that was tainted will be pure again

credits

from The Wilderness Yet, released July 24, 2020
Rosie Hodgson – lead vocal
Philippe Barnes – vocal harmony
Rowan Piggott – vocal harmony

Rowan Piggott – mixing
Sam Proctor – mastering
Adam Oehlers – artwork

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about

The Wilderness Yet UK

The Wilderness Yet combines the acclaimed talents of folksinger Rosie Hodgson, traditional fiddler Rowan Piggott, and guitarist-flautist Philippe Barnes. Independently, they have earned audiences’ esteem as consummate musicians; together, they weave a tapestry of traditional & self-penned songs with a charm and familarity that is usually only found in seasoned line-ups. ... more

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