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Mainsail Café / Songs / Farewell to Tarwathie

Farewell to Tarwathie

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This song may be sung to the traditional English air 'Blow Ye Winds Westerly'. Other writers have drawn a connection with Green Bushes or The Wagoner's Lad. Bob Dylan used the tune as a basis for his song Farewell Angelina. Judy Collins is accompanied by humpback whales on this song for her 1970 album Whales and Nightingales.

A. L. Lloyd's and other historians identify the author as George Scroggie, a miller from Federate, in the Parish of New Deer, near Aberdeen. It comes from the early 1850s. Tarwathie is also in Aberdeenshire, northwest of the whaling port of Peterhead.

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Farewell to Tarwathie, adieu Mormond Hills,
And the dear land of Crimond, I bid ye farewell.
We're bound out for Greenland and ready to sail,
In hopes to find riches in hunting the whale.

Adieu to my comrades, for a while we must part,
And likewise the dear lass who first won my heart,
And the cold ice of Greenland my love will not chill,
And the longer the absence, more loving she'll feel.

Our ship is well-rigged and she's ready to sail.
Our crew they are anxious to follow the whale,
Where the icebergs do float and the stormy winds blow,
Where the land and the ocean is covered with snow.

Oh, the cold coast of Greenland is barren and bare,
No seedtime nor harvest is ever known there.
And the birds here sing sweetly on mountains and dale,
But there isn't a birdie to sing to the whale.

There is no habitation for a man to live there
And the king of that country is the fierce Greenland bear,
And there'll be no temptation to tarry long there.
With our ship bumper full we will homeward repair.

As sung by A. L. Lloyd on Leviathan!

Metadata

Attribution: George Scroggie of New Deer in Buchan (Scotland)
Roud Index: 2562
DT Index: 1949, 8972
Forecastle song, Whaling song
Scottish, Storm

Selected recordings:

Leviathan! Ballads and Songs of the Whaling Trade Various artists

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