I know she rose early, for I heard her sweet singing
Echoing over the flowering heath.
She gathered the willow, the elder, the linden,
The holly, the ivy twined into a wreath.
Oh, the notes you are forming, I long to possess them.
They leap from your tongue and ascend on the breeze.
Had I risen early from bed in the morning,
Then I would have hold of the notes you release.
And she gave me the wreath and she sang like a starling,
My fingers intwined in her feathery hair,
But she shrugged me away and said Alasdair, darling,
When a song's on the wind it belongs to the air.
See Polly, she sings as she sits at the spinning wheel.
Mary, she sings as she skips with her rope.
Jonny, he sings as he fetches the herring creel
And Billy, he sings as he rolls down the slope.
And the whole house is singing, The whole house is singing,
The rafters are ringing, and the timbers are thrown,
The whole house is singing, the whole house is singing,
And I overhear them, and this is their song.
We are stronger when the moon glows in the sky,
And the moon causes the tide to rise and rise,
And the weed carried upon the drawing foam
We will gather to bedeck our happy home.
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