Digital Tradition Mirror

Scarborough Settler's Lament

(This score available as ABC, SongWright, PostScript, PNG, or PMW, or a MIDI file)
Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

Scarborough Settler's Lament

Away wi' Canada's muddy creeks
And Canada's fields of pine
Your land of wheat is a goodly land,
But oh, it is not mine
The heathy hill, the grassy date.
The daisy spangled lea, the purling burn and craggy linn, auld
Scotland's glens give me.

Oh, I would like to hear again the lark on Tinny's hill
And see the wee bit gowany that blooms beside the rill.
Like banished Swill who view afar his Alps with longing e'e.
I gaze upon the morning star that shines on my country.

No more I'll win by Eskdale glen or Pentland's craggy comb.
The days can ne'er come back again of thirty years that's gone,
But fancy oft at midnight hour will steal across the sea.
And yestereve, in a pleasant dream, I saw the old country.

Each well-known scene that met my view brought childhood's joys
    to mind.
The blackbird sang on Tushey linn the song he sang, 'lang syne.'
But like a dream time flies away, again, the morning came.
And I awoke in Canada, three thousand miles frae hame.

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Whether the Scarborough referred to is the one in the British
Isles or the wasteland near Toronto (known locally as Scarberia)
we don't know.

Fowke, in The Penguin Book of Canadian Folk Songs attributes this to
  Sandy Glendenning ca 1840. Tune from Fowke.  RG

Recorded by Stan Rogers in 1982 on For the Family, Folk
Tradition, R002.
DC

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!