Summer Mixtape #3: The Wild Mountain Thyme, Pt. 1

The Wild Mountain Thyme is an old Scottish and Irish song (it’s a little bit of both — the melody and premise were originally Scottish, a song called The Braes of Balquhither, but the more contemporary lyrics were Irish) about youthful love in summertime that somehow manages to evoke both utter wholesomeness and the deepest desire and longing. It is a top-5 all-time song for me (digression, I brought this up with a friend the other day — what is your favorite song, an enduring one, since favorites really tend to come and go — a song that is as much an archetype of what you wish songs were as a perfect song in its own right — mine is I Shall Be Released, as recorded by Bob Dylan & The Band during the Basement Tapes summer, my friend immediately identified Bob Marley & The Wailers’ Redemption Song as his) as much for its remarkable melody as for its topic. My favorite line in the song: “If my true love won’t go / I will surely find another / To pull wild mountain thyme / all around the purple heather.” A real mixture of true love and whomever I can find will do.

A few other notes — I think I understand it that Ewan MacColl wrote The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face to honor his love for Peggy Seeger, and then had her sing it. I know there are more famed versions of this one, but I find its simplicity and directness beguiling and authentic. Margaret Barry was an itinerant street singer who ran away from home when she was sixteen and thereafter sang folk songs — Anne Briggs, who first gained attention for a version of She Moved Through the Fair, learned her version from Barry. A.L. Lloyd was an Australian who was more or less recognized as an authority on Australian folk songs from the bush — I learned about him because Bob Dylan covered a couple of his renditions of songs, Bonnie Ship the Diamond and Jim Jones at Botany Bay (a song with some of the most devastating lyrics I’ve ever heard and one of the best melodies as well). When I first began to sing ballads and folk songs to my children at bedtime, Hares On the Mountain was the first one I learned that I hadn’t already known. When I first made this mixtape, I included a version of Dumbarton Drums recorded by The Beers Family (who recorded the most beautiful version of The Water Is Wide that you will ever hear — no really, check it out, it’s amazing), but it was low quality and included a few minutes of ambient noise. I’ve replaced it here with an at-least-as-lovely version by Jean Redpath, who is underrated even as far as unknown traditional folk singers go. I recently saw Tim Erikson (who is local to where I live in Western Massachusetts) perform at a small folk club and he blew me away with both his musicianship and his total commitment to the song, whichever song. Anne Briggs is well-known and with good reason. Martin Carthy’s and Dave Swarbrick’s version of Brigg Fair is not my top favorite — it’s Shirley Collins’ that takes the honor, as with most songs she ever sang — but since I had already included a song by Collins here, this was next-best — and still good! Whether it’s known as Banks of the Royal Canal, Royal Canal, or The Auld Triangle, I learned this one as well from Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes, and have been singing it for 27 years. And finally, Paul Clayton — like Shirley Collins, if he did a version of a song, it’s very nearly always my favorite version of the song. He favors simplicity without overdoing traditionalism in his arrangements and I both trust and admire that impulse when it comes to folk music.

I began a Pt. 2 for this mixtape more than a decade ago and never finished it, but now I certainly will, along with a Pt. 3. Summer is both short and long.

Here is the track list for The Wild Mountain Thyme, Pt. 1, a mixtape made presumably for Jay Thompson as well as for my children circa approximately the summer of 2013.

1. Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

2. Margaret Barry, She Moved Through the Fair

3. A.L. Lloyd, I Wish My Love

4. Shirley Collins & Davey Graham, Hares On the Mountain

5. Joan Baez, The Wild Mountain Thyme

6. Jean Redpath, Dumbarton Drums

7. Tim Erikson, I Wish the Wars Were All Over

8. Anne Briggs, The Snow It Melts Too Soon

9. Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick, Brigg Fair

10. Liam Clancy, Royal Canal

11. Paul Clayton, Who’s Gonna Buy You Ribbons (When I’m Gone)