The “Canadian Boat-Song”:  A Mosaic

Compiled by D.M.R. Bentley

I

The Text

In the Noctes Ambrosianae section of Blackwood’s Magazine there appeared in September, 1829, the following interchange:

NORTH

     By the bye, I have a letter this morning from a friend of mine now in Upper Canada. He was rowed down the St. Lawrence lately, for several days on end, by a set of strapping fellows, all born in that country, and yet hardly one of whom could speak a word of any tongue but the Gaelic. They sung heaps of our old Highland oar-songs, he says, and capitally well, in the true Hebridean fashion, and they had others of their own, Gaelic too, some of which my friend noted down, both words and music. He has sent me a translation of one of their ditties — shall I try how it will croon?

OMNES

     O, by all means — by all means.

 

NORTH

     Very well, ye’ll easily catch the air, and be sure you tip me vigour at the chorus.
                                                                                                  [Chants]

                             CANADIAN BOAT-SONG — (from the Gaelic.)

            Listen to me, as when ye heard our father
                  Sing long ago, the song of other shores —
            Listen to me, and then in chorus gather
                  All your deep voices, as ye pull your oars:

CHORUS.

                      Fair these broad meads-these hoary woods are grand;
                      But we are exiles from our fathers’ land.

            From the lone shieling of the misty island
                  Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas —
            Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,
                  And we in dreams behold the Hebrides:
                       Fair these meads-these hoary woods are grand;
                       But we are exiles from our fathers’ land.

            We ne’er shall tread the fancy-haunted valley,
                  Where ’tween the dark hills creeps the small clear stream,
            In arms around the patriarch banner rally,
                   Nor see the moon on royal tombstones gleam:
                       Fair these broad meads-these hoary woods are grand;
                       But we are exiles from our fathers’ land.

            When the bold kindred, in the time long-vanish’d,
                  Conquer’d the soil and fortified the keep, —
            No seer foretold the children would be banish’d,
                  That a degenerate Lord might boast his sheep:
                       Fair these broad meads-these hoary woods are grand;
                       But we are exiles from our fathers’ land.

            Come foreign rage-let Discord burst in slaughter!
                  O then for clansman true, and stern claymore —
            The hearts that would have given their blood like water,
                  Beat heavily beyond the Atlantic roar:
                      Fair these broad meads-these hoary woods are grand;
                       But we are exiles from our fathers’ land.

SHEPHERD

      Hech me! that’s really a very affectin’ thing, now. — Weel, Doctor, what say you? Another bowl?