AM1045
My heart's in the Highlands
Music: Trad. arr. Alasdair MacLean, Words: Robert Burns, adapted by Alasdair Maclean
Voicing: SATB & piano
Performance time approx: 2m 50s
Range S: c' — g'' / A: a — c' / T: f — f'' / B: A [opt. F] — c'
Price code: B
Complexity:
This piece is part of the set "Five Scottish songs".
The set also includes:
Robert Burns’ version of this soaring song of love for Scotland was published in 1790 in Volume 3 of The Scots Musical Museum, a compendium of six hundred Scottish songs compiled by James Johnson – with much assistance from Burns himself. For this song, Burns added lines to part of an old ballad called The Strong Walls of Derry (itself a concoction of fragments from more than one other song), crafting something tender and beautiful.
The recording is by the Elliott Chorale of Mount Allison University, Canada, dir. Gayle Martin, and is used with permission.
My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the north,
The birthplace of valour, the country of worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
Farewell to the mountains high cover’d with snow,
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.
Robert Burns, adapted by the composer