INTRODUCTION by Bob Levering, 2023:

​

Our next song is WILD MOUNTAIN THYME!  Yeah, we were pretty excited too.  Then we realized that TIME was spelled T H Y M E.  True, there are lots of Laddies and Lassies running around, but they're not doing much, mostly looking for herbs and plants and stuff.  According to highland tradition, maidens would wear a sprig of thyme or lavender or mint to attract a suitor, and the lyrics may indeed have been inspired by that custom, but we never found any evidence of that in the lyrics.

 

Nevertheless, it is a delightful melody - originally a Scottish poem put to music in around 1800.  Then a hundred years later an Irish musician named McPeake heard the tune while traveling through Scotland, wrote it down with a few changes and published it.  It was first recorded by McPeake's nephew in 1957 for a BBC series called As I Roved Out.  That could not have gained the song much notoriety, but somehow it made it across the Atlantic and was recorded by just about everybody:  Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, The Byrds, Rod Stewart, and James Taylor, among many others.   The large number of solo performers who took up the song attests to the beauty of the melody, and the version that we are about to sing also has some beautiful harmonies.  I think you'll like it!