# The Sobbing of the Spey

- Music: Charles Villiers Stanford (died 1924)
- Words: Murdoch Maclean
- Licence of the score: CC0 1.0
- Credit: OpenScore Lieder Corpus (CC0)
- Source: https://musescore.com/openscore-lieder-corpus/scores/6548234

## 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?”  

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).