She Moved Through the Fair by Padraic Colum
I’m still listening to Loreena McKennitt (concert in two weeks!) and she adapted a couple of Padraic Colum’s poems to songs, so I thought I’d post one of them. Margo Hennebach (among countless others I’m sure) has also recorded an arrangement of this one. Yay! As I don’t have any textual evidence, I’ve relied on the internet (which is fraught with erroneous information). This version came from Wikipedia, which claims that Colum didn’t write the last verse. As I’ve seen it attributed to him in other places and Loreena McKennitt included it, I’ve put it here, with the caveat that perhaps it shouldn’t be included.
She Moved Through the Fair
By Padraic Colum
My young love said to me my mother won’t mind
And my father won’t slight you for your lack of kind
And she laid her hand on me and this she did say
It will not be long now ’til our wedding day
And she went away from me, she moved through the fair
And fondly I watched her move here and move there
And then she went onward, just one star awake
Like the swan in the evening moves over the lake
The people were saying no two e’er were wed
But one had a sorrow that never was said
And I smiled as she passed with her goods and her gear
And that was the last that I saw of my dear
Last night she came to me, my dead love came in
So softly she came her feet made no din
And she laid her hand on me and this she did say
It will not be long now ’til our wedding day
