The Sobbing of the Spey
Music: Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924) · Words: Murdoch Maclean
’Tis the sobbing of the Spey, Like the weary
voice acrying Of a mother, lone and grey,
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The words
’Tis the sobbing of the Spey, Like the weary
voice acrying Of a mother, lone and grey,
For her lost ones ever sighing;
And where skies of sapphire glisten In the
lands beyond the main, There are straining
ears that listen As the voice goes out again
“Bring me back my sons and daughters,
Children of a vanished day; For the sorrows
haunt the waters In the sobbing of the Spey.”
Oh! the children of her fame Who return to
tell her never That their love is still the
same For their
river; From the bonds of wealth caressing,
’Mid the wastelands and the green,
How they fain would seek a blessing From the
regal Moutain Queen But the spirit of the
waters Still is calling “Come away;”
And there’s grief for sons and daughters In the
sobbing of the Spey.
There’s a crying in the night Like a note of
sadness straying; Is there ear can hear aright
What the wafted voice is saying?
Few there be who know, but rather Turn them to
the worldly thrall; Yet wherever Scotsmen
gather They can hear that homeland call.
Saying ever, saying ever “Sons and
daughters, why thus faithless do ye stray,
While the sorrows haunt the waters In the
sobbing
of the Spey?”
About this song
- Music
- Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924) (dates as OpenScore states them)
- Words
- Murdoch Maclean
- Language
- English, as its source states it
- First published
- in or before 1919, as IMSLP states it
- Length
- 2:25
- Verses
- 2
- Its source files it as
- Songs of a Roving Celt, Op.157
- The score
- OpenScore Lieder Corpus; CC0 1.0, as its source states it. OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0)
- Offered in
- the United States
- Not offered in
- the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia, India, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Thailand, Malaysia, Russia, Ukraine, Türkiye, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Switzerland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, Algeria, Morocco, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen and Syria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia, Ghana, Mozambique, Angola, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the member states of the Bangui Agreement (OAPI), Venezuela, Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea, and wherever the site has not read the law
Songs to sing here are made from public-domain scores: the OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0), the Mutopia Project (each score's licence as Mutopia states it) and the scores in Japanese Wikipedia's articles (CC BY-SA 4.0, by each article's contributors); dates and first publications as IMSLP, the LiederNet Archive, Mutopia and Wikidata state them. Karaoke videos play in YouTube's player; live channels from the iptv-org database on their own pages; stations from Radio Browser. The piano is the Salamander Grand Piano by Alexander Holm (CC BY 3.0). “K-pop” and “anime songs” are said only where a source says so. Where songs from scores are offered.