Contact
If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:
Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)
Artist: Bill Bonyun
Author: traditional
Label: Folkways
Year: 1950
On lp Who Built America as Waly Waly. "One of the best loved American ballads" (Carolyn Hester).
Covers:
Kathleen Ferrier [as O Waly Waly]
Andrew Rowan Summers [Appalachian dulcimer player from Virginia, recorded by Moses Asch for album The Faulse Lady; Summers cut it as O Waly Waly while these words are not in the lyrics]
Pete Seeger [learned it from his sister Peggy, then already living in England (where she also cut a Waly Waly)]
Guy Carawan [learned it from Pete Seeger]
John Langstaff [as O Waly Waly (The Water Is Wide, I Cannot Get O'er)]
Buffy Sainte-Marie [as Waly Waly]
Bob Dylan [during Rolling Thunder Revue; released on Bootleg series 5; his Lay Down Your Weary Tune, saved up for the Biograph box set, comes pretty close and Bootleg Series Vol 17 holds it as outtakes from his Time Out Of Mind sessions]
June Tabor [as Waly Waly]
Nana Mouskouri [as O Waly Waly]
Guy De Mey & Sylvia Traen [as O Waly Waly on lp The English Art Song]
Neil Young [as Mother Earth (Natural Anthem); also live on Farm Aid]
Eva Cassidy [posthumous release]
Renaud [as La Ballade Nord-Irlandaise on cd Marchand de cailloux]
Cowboy Junkies [in film The River White]
Michelle Shocked [a cappella]
Sarah Brightman [as O Waly Waly]
June Tabor [in medley with St. Agnes & Jeannie And Jamie]
More versions: The Royal Scotts Dragoon Guards, Moira Kerr, Joan Baez, Bonnie Dobson, The Seekers, Mary Black. Also in film Distant Voices Still Lives. O Waly Waly is different from old English song Waly Waly, first published in 1727. In 1905 Cecil Sharp collected a version in Somerset, England. Waly Waly was recorded by John Jacob Niles in the early 50s, by Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger in '61 and by Andreas Scholl & Andreas Martin ('96). No wonder O Waly Waly and Waly Waly are mixed up a lot. Waly Waly and The Water Is Wide share one lyric line: "I leaned my back against some oak, Thinking that he was a trusty tree. But first he bended and then he broke, And so did my false love to me". Pre morning-after pill poetry, that's for sure. Can also be seen as an answer to the Cuckoo Song (see there). Also lyrically related with The Little Sparrow, the Scottish ballad Jamie Douglas and Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies (The Carter Family). The line: "Oh love is gentle and love is kind, the sweetest flower when first it's new, but love grows old and waxes cold, and fades away like morning dew" comes with both The Little Sparrow and The Water Is Wide.
If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:
Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)