CONCERT INTRODUCTION

​

(Kathy Flaxman, 2020)

​

You may have known this song as The Water Is Wide. It was popularized by Pete Seeger and others during the folk music era of the 1950s and 60s. However, it began as an old Scottish lament, or wail (hence waly). The earliest known versions of the text go back to the 1720s in Scotland. Both words and tune wandered and evolved, as folk songs do, and what is now considered the definitive version was first published in 1906 as a song from Somerset which is in the southwest of England. This arrangement was done by the contemporary composer John Rutter.