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Robert Burns 1775

Dick Gaughan wrote the following in his iconic interpretation: "I learned this, from Geordie Hamilton, an ex-miner from Kirkintilloch who worked with the Post Office in Edinburgh. He used to frequent the Forrest Hill Bar (always known as Sandy Bell's) and was responsible for encouraging and assisting many a young singer. But it was very difficult learning a complete song from him as he had a habit of starting one, singing a verse or two, then saying, "You don't really want to hear that" and launching into something else. The wonderful Ulster singer, Len Graham, sings this to a similar tune. Due to its closeness to the south-west of Scotland, Burns' songs and poetry are very popular in Ulster." "Peggy dear" was Peggy Thomson of Kirkoswald, a coastal town where Burns spent his seventeenth summer

Dick Gaughan: https://dickgaughan.bandcamp.com/track/now-westlin-winds-trad-arr-gaughan

Now westlin winds and slaughtering guns Bring autumn’s pleasant weather
The moorcock springs on whirring wings Among the blooming heather
Now waving grain, wild o’er the plain Delights the weary farmer
And the moon shines bright as I rove at night To muse upon my charmer

The partridge loves the fruitful fells The plover loves the mountain
The woodcock haunts the lonely dells The soaring hern the fountain
Through lofty groves the cushat roves The path of man to shun it
The hazel bush o’erhangs the thrush The spreading thorn the linnet

Thus every kind their pleasure find The savage and the tender
Some social join and leagues combine Some solitary wander
Avaunt! Away! the cruel sway, Tyrannic man’s dominion
The sportsman’s joy, the murdering cry The fluttering, gory pinion

But Peggy dear the evening’s clear Thick flies the skimming swallow
The sky is blue, the fields in view All fading green and yellow
Come let us stray our gladsome way And view the charms of nature
The rustling corn, the fruited thorn And every happy creature

We’ll gently walk and sweetly talk Till the silent moon shines clearly
I’ll grasp thy waist and, fondly pressed Swear how I love thee dearly
Not vernal showers to budding flowers Not autumn to the farmer
So dear can be as thou to me My fair, my lovely charmer 

trad 

Lady Maisery says their tune, basically the one I know, was collected from a Sam P. Bayard of Pennsylvania and included in Lomax 1934. Sandy & Caroline Paton say their version recorded 1966 on “Songs of Beech Mountain, North Carolina” was collected from a Mrs. Buna Hicks, who said that the song was regularly used to end religious services, or “camp meetings”, in her area, years ago, and that her mother was always asked to sing it.

Fathers, now our meeting is over
Fathers we must part
If I never see you anymore
I’ll love you in my heart

Chorus:
And we’ll stand on the shore (X3) And be safe forever more 

Mothers…Sisters…Brothers…

Nancy Kerr 2014

Shortly after she released it, a preeminent online cricket website was describing a boring fourth day of a long cricket match and said: "as Nancy Kerr said in 'Now is the Time', 'Now is that blessed moment'". She has no idea who the writer was. Kerr jokes that was her peak, being quoted on this cricket website.

Nancy Kerr: https://nancykerr.bandcamp.com/track/now-is-the-time

Chorus:
Now is the time, now is that blessed moment
Now is the breath of life sent in turn to weather a gathering rhyme
Be bold and kind, farewell my old discontent
Just ask the heavens’ consent to burn and turn cold days to fine

City of souls blown by the breath of old lovers
Where death’s cold dances hold prisoners so very unkind
Farewell, we sing, dressed in the leavings of others
For guests shall plenty bring and turn cold days to fine

Happy and poor, is that more foolishness, talking?
Will walking Peace’s path preserve your hearth in flame?
Scant seed in store brings feathered visitors flocking
To sing shall comfort bring, for souls are made the same

Sinners, arise and turn your eyes to the waters
For nature’s mortal pool shall bathe all fools in brine
Be not denied when all sure-footedness falters
For earth’s uncertainties have turned our fields to wine 

Jean Ritchie 1977

Ritchie said "I've written some healing songs too. One is called Now is the Cool of the Day, which is my favorite of my written songs right now."

My Lord, he said unto me Do you like my garden so fair
You may live in this garden if you’ll keep the grasses green
And I’ll return in the cool of the day

Chorus:
Now is the cool of the day (x2)
This earth is a garden, the garden of my Lord
And he walks in his garden
In the cool of the day

Then my Lord, he said unto me Do you like my pastures so green
You may live in this garden if you will feed my sheep
And I’ll return in the cool of the day

Then my Lord, he said unto me Do you like my garden so free
You may live in this garden if you’ll keep the people free
And I’ll return in the cool of the day 

trad

Chorus:
You’re nothin’ but a humbug. So they say, so they say.
You’re nothin’ but a humbug. That’s all I know

Catfish grow on a huckleberry vine (So they say, so they say)
Catfish grow on a huckleberry vine (That’s all I know)

Never seen the like since I been born, Sailor on the fife rail crackin’ out corn.

One day the blackbird said to the crow Why do you love your farmer so?

That’s my trade since Adam was born Scratchin’ and a diggin’ up the farmers corn.

Said the blackbird to the crow Don’t tell those pretty girls all I know. 

Stan Rogers 1981

"At a concert in Calgary, we performed this song, and when we finished, there were a few seconds of silence, in which I clearly heard someone say 'My God, he's written a new national anthem!' Not quite what I had in mind, but not too far off, either." Inspired to change "savage" in chorus by Jules Peiperl & Annaleah Ernst's workshop at Youth Trad Song 2026.

Chorus:
Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and ravaged
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

Westward from the Davis Strait ’tis there ’twas said to lie
The sea route to the Orient for which so many died;
Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones
And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones.

Three centuries thereafter, I take passage overland
In the footsteps of brave Kelso, where his “sea of flowers” began
Watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again
This tardiest explorer, driving hard across the plain.

And through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west
I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson and the rest
Who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me
To race the roaring Fraser to the sea.

How then am I so different from the first men through this way?
Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away.
To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men
To find there but the road back home again. 

Josephine Douglas 1939

Collected from Josephine Douglas in 1939 at the Parchman Farm Women's Correctional Farm in Mississippi by Herbert Halpert

Chorus:
I’m sittin’ by the river on the levee, Waiting ’til the steamboat come down,
Them cotton bales are rolling mighty heavy, Miles and miles around.
I thought I heard the steamboat when she landed, Landed on the levee below,
I’m sittin’ by the river on the levee, Waiting ’til the steamboat come down.

Noah, Noah, what a foolish man,
Built the ark on the sandy land.

End of every verse:
I said, who built the ark? (Brother Noah, Noah!)
Who built the ark? (Brother Noah, Noah!)
Brother Noah built the ark!

Matthew stood by the Red Sea shore,
Smotin’ at the water with a two-by-four.

Matthew, Martha, Luke and John,
All them sinners is a-dead and gone.

Matthew, Martha sitting in the shade,
Thinking about the money that I ain’t made.

trad 

Bert Lloyd wrote in 1958: "In the nineteenth century, this popular street ballad was issued over and over again on broadsheets. An older song, The Green Bed, describing the adventures of a sailor in an uncharitable boarding house, seems to be the parent of Wild Rover." Shortly thereafter, Peggy Seeger & Ewan MacColl collected it from Sam Larner, and from their book, Luke Kelly of the Dubliners learned it. The Dubliners' version is close to what I've heard sung today, and you can hear the lineage from recordings of Larner, but Larner's version sounds a little more distant from the familiar setting.

I’ve been a wild rover for many’s the year
And I’ve spent all my money on whiskey and beer.
But now I’m returning with gold in great store
And I never will play the wild rover no more

Chorus:
And it’s no, nay, never
No, nay, never, no more
Will I play the wild rover
No, never, no more

I went into an ale-house I used to frequent
And I told the landlady my money was spent.
I asked her for credit, she answered me nay,
Such “a custom like yours I can have any day

I took from my pocket ten sovereigns bright
And the landlady’s eyes opened wide with delight.
She said I’d have whiskey and wines of the best
And the words that she told me were only in jest.

I’ll go home to my parents, confess what I’ve done,
And I’ll ask them to pardon their prodigal son.
And when they’ve caressed me as oft’ times before
Then I never will play the wild rover no more 

Robert Burns 1887

Gudeen to you kimmer And how do you do?
Hiccup, quo’ kimmer, The better that I’m fou.

Chorus (x2)
We’re a’ noddin, nid nid nodding,
We’re a’ nodding at our house at hame,

Kate sits i’ the neuk, Suppin hen-broo;
Deil tak Kate An’ she be na noddin too!

How’s a’ wi’ you, kimmer And how do ye fare?
A pint o’ the best o’t, And twa pints mair.

How’s a’ wi’ you, kimmer, And how do ye thrive;
How mony bairns hae ye? Quo’ kimmer, I hae five.

Are they a’ Johny’s? Eh! atweel no:
Twa o’ them were gotten When Johny was awa.

Cats like milk And dogs like broo;
Lads like lasses weel, And lasses lads too. 

Sheldon Posen 1996

Finest Kind wrote "About the recent calamitous demise of the 500-year-old Newfoundland cod fishery. The song is modelled on Coal Not Dole, Kay Sutcliffe's lament for the coal mining industry in Great Britain, as sung by Coope, Boyes, and Simpson. A reach is a sea inlet or channel. A stage was the shed where in former times inshore cod fishermen landed, split, washed, and salted their catch. A flake was a rough pole-and-bough platform on which salt cod was dried in sun and wind before being exported."

Finest Kind: https://ianrobb1.bandcamp.com/track/no-more-fish-no-fishermen

Out along the harbour reach Boats stand dried up on the beach
Ghost-like in the early dawn Empty, now the fish are gone.
What will become of people now? Try to build a life somehow
Hard, hard times are back again No more fish, no fishermen.

No more shoppers in the stores Since the fish plant closed its doors
Men who walked a trawler’s decks Now line up for welfare cheques.
There’s big “For Sale” signs everywhere Pockets empty, cupboards bare
See it on the news at ten No more fish, no fishermen.

Once from Ship Cove to Cape Race Port aux Basques to Harbour Grace
Newfoundlanders fished for cod Owing merchants, trusting God.
They filled their dories twice a day They fished their poor sweet lives away
They could not imagine then No more fish, no fishermen.

Back before the Second War We could catch our fish inshore
Boats were small and gear was rough We caught fish, but left enough.
And now there’s no more fish because The trawler fleets took all there was
We could see it coming then No more fish, no fishermen.

Farewell now to stage and flake Get out for the children’s sake
Leave all friends and kin behind Take whatever job you find.
There’s some that say things aren’t so black They say the fish will all come back
Who’ll be here to catch them then? No more fish, no fishermen.