The True Lover's Farewell: A Song History

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"The True Lover's Farewell" is a traditional English parting song, and one of the titles under which the folk song best known as "The Turtle Dove" has been sung and collected.[1] Cecil Sharp regarded the two as closely allied, and he noted that three of his stanzas resemble lines in a garland called "The True Lover's Farewell," printed in 1792.[2] Sharp also argued that peasant songs of this family were the model for Robert Burns's "A Red, Red Rose," citing Henderson's statement that Burns owned a broadside version.[2] A. L. Lloyd, in notes reproduced at Mainly Norfolk, wrote that one such printed sheet survives with Burns's name written on it.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index uses its entry for these songs as a catch-all for floating verses about a departing lover, found in Britain and across much of the United States.[3]

Round cut-paper love token ringed with hearts bearing handwritten verses, red vases and green tulip sprays around a central flower.

Unidentified artist, Love Token, watercolor on cut paper, ca. 1800. A cut-paper love token of about 1800, a keepsake of the kind exchanged between parted lovers, shown for the song's farewell; the token has no connection to the song.

English collectors noted the song in the southern counties in the early 1900s; George Butterworth, for example, took down a version from Mrs. Cranstone of Billingshurst, Sussex, in July 1907.[2][4] It also turned up in the Southern Appalachians, where Sharp found it in 1916; his 1917 book with Olive Dame Campbell prints four versions under the title "The True Lover's Farewell," the first from Mrs. Rosie Hensley of Carmen, North Carolina, and another from Mrs. Sulvaney Ramsey of Flag Pond, Tennessee.[5] Mountain singers kept it in circulation for decades afterward: Maud Karpeles recorded Emma Shelton of Alleghany, North Carolina, singing it in 1955, and Mike Yates recorded Evelyn Ramsey of Sodom Laurel in Madison County in 1980.[1]

In the folk revival the song was recorded widely under several titles, "The Turtle Dove" among them, by singers including A. L. Lloyd in 1956 and Nic Jones, whose version June Tabor called the definitive one.[1] Maureen Sellers gives it a DAD-tuning melody along with a chord backup part in Simply Duets, her 123-page Fingers Of Steel book of older songs arranged for mountain dulcimer duet.[6]

Our book that contains the song "The True Lover's Farewell"

Sources

  1. Mainly Norfolk: "A.L. Lloyd: Turtle Dove".
  2. Internet Archive: "Cecil J. Sharp, English Folk Songs, Selected Edition, Volume I (Novello)".
  3. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Fare You Well, My Own True Love".
  4. Sussex Traditions: "Turtle Dove, The".
  5. Internet Archive: "Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil J. Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (1917)".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, Simply Duets".
  7. Image: Unidentified artist, Love Token, watercolor on cut paper, ca. 1800. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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