The Water Is Wide: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

"The Water Is Wide" grew out of the Scottish lament "O Waly, Waly, Gin Love Be Bonny." A version with its tune appeared in William Thomson's Orpheus Caledonius (1725 or 1726), and a longer text in the second volume of Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany, a volume whose date is uncertain but which one catalogue gives as 1726.[1] Some of the modern song's imagery is older still: Mainly Norfolk quotes Evelyn K. Wells, who connects one stanza to "The Distressed Virgin," a broadside by Martin Parker.[2] The lament shares verses with the Scottish ballad "Jamie Douglas" (Child 204), and the Roud index files both under number 87. Scholars disagree over which song borrowed from the other, and the Traditional Ballad Index lists them separately because "Waly, Waly" has become a purely lyrical piece with a life of its own.[3][4]

Painting of a broad flat landscape with a wide river, a sailboat and a distant town

Philips Koninck, Wide River Landscape, oil on canvas, ca. 1648–49. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its wide water; it has no connection to the song.

The song as it is sung today owes most to Cecil Sharp. In Somerset between 1904 and 1906 he noted related songs from Mrs. Elizabeth Mogg of Holford, Mrs. Caroline Cox of High Ham, and James Thomas of Cannington, and from such field versions he assembled a composite "O Waly, Waly," taking from Mrs. Cox both the tune and four of the five verses she had sung.[1][2][5] It was printed in the third series of Folk Songs from Somerset (1906), which he edited with Charles Marson, and an expanded text followed in his One Hundred English Folksongs (1916).[5][1] The Traditional Tune Archive accordingly calls the modern song neither American nor, strictly speaking, especially old.[5]

Pete Seeger recorded it as "The Water Is Wide" on American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 2 for Folkways in 1958.[6] The album notes did not say where he learned it, but his 1960 songbook described it as a song from England collected by Sharp.[1]

Find books with The Water Is Wide for sale →

Sources

  1. Just Another Tune (Jürgen Kloss): "The Water Is Wide".
  2. Mainly Norfolk: "The Water Is Wide".
  3. Traditional Ballad Index: "Waly Waly (The Water is Wide)".
  4. Traditional Ballad Index: "Jamie Douglas [Child 204]".
  5. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Water is Wide (The)".
  6. Smithsonian Folkways: "American Favorite Ballads, Vol. 2" (Pete Seeger).