A New "Wild Mountain Thyme" / "Will You Go, Lassie Go?"

Maureen takes singing lessons, and this week she and her teacher decided that the next song they would work on would be the fine, Celtic folk song variously known as “Wild Mountain Thyme” and “Will You Go, Lassie, Go?” Like so many traditional folk songs, it has somewhat tangled roots, with links to at least two Scottish folk songs from the late eighteenth century. The song we know today was composed in the 1950s by an Irishman, Francis McPeake 1st (1885 – 1971), of a long line of musical McPeakes; he is described in the Dictionary of Irish Biography as a “piper and tram conductor.” The chorus of his best-known song is a musical marvel, the lyrics perfectly weighted (both in stress and in quantity), and the melody endlessly stirring. But when Maureen and I listened to different recordings of it last night, we both agreed that it’s not all it could be in one respect: it lacks a story. The stanzas are bare bones, and there aren’t many of them:

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=wild+mountain+thyme+-+lyrics

As Maureen observed, the most interesting thing about them may well be the note of optimism that the singer expresses when facing the possibility of lost love: "If my true love will not have me, / I will surely find another." But the note has no follow up; there really is no story developed in the song’s few stanzas.

Why not another version, then? Last night and this morning I worked on a version of “Wild Mountain Thyme” that has a story to it. Here it is:



Oh, the summertime had come

All the young birds had their feathers,

And the wild mountain thyme

Grew around the blooming heather.



It was long and far we’d roam,

It was hand in hand together

And as two we built a home—

And all around the blooming heather.

Will you go, lassie, go?

And we'll all go together

To pull wild mountain thyme

All around the blooming heather

Will you go, lassie go?

Then the dazzle days flew past

As dazzle days will ever,

And my lassie bore a lass,

While all around was blooming heather.

Will you go, lassie, go?

And we'll all go together

To pull wild mountain thyme

And all around the blooming heather.

Will you go, lassie, go?

We both swore that we’d be true,

Then my true love found another,

I grieved my heart with weeping,

Wee lass and me together.

Will you go, lassie go?

As we’d all go together,

To pull wild mountain thyme,

And all around the blooming heather

Will you go, lassie, go?

Now the spring has come again

And the warm, wonder weather,

This is now and that was then,

Like my love, I’ll find another.

Are you gone, lassie, gone?

Are we both gone, together?

Past the wild mountain thyme

And all around the blooming heather

That’s all gone, lassie, gone.

But we’ll both be ever true

All through any love whatever,

To our lassie, ever new,

And all around the blooming heather.

Will you go, lassie, go?

And we'll all go together,

To pull wild mountain thyme

All around the blooming heather

Will you go, lassie, go?