Price codeB
ScottishCatalogue no. 1044
The winter it is past (MacLean)
Music: Trad. arr. Alasdair MacLean, Words: Robert Burns, adapted by Alasdair Maclean
Voicing: SATB & piano
Performance time approx: 2m 00s
Range S: d' — d'' / A: a — c'# / T: d — e' / B: A — d'
Price code: B
Complexity:
This piece is part of the set "Five Scottish songs".
The set also includes:
Robert Burns’ version of this lovely song was published in 1788 in The Scots Musical Museum, a compendium of six hundred Scottish songs compiled by James Johnson – with much assistance from Burns who, in his own words, “collected, begg’d, borrow’d and stole… all the songs I could meet with.” Closely related songs have been noted in Ireland and England, with a range of different texts and melodies. Burns based his own lyrics on a contemporary ballad called The Lovesick Maid; his tune may be the one that belonged to that ballad, or it may have been adapted from another source.
The recording is by the Elliott Chorale of Mount Allison University, Canada, dir. Gayle Martin, and is used with permission.
The winter it is past, and the summer comes at last,
And the birds sing on ev’ry tree;
Now ev’rything is glad, yet I’m so very sad,
For my true love is parted from me.
My love is like the sun that in the sky does run,
Forever constant and true;
But his is like the moon that wanders up and down,
And ev’ry month is new.
The rose upon the brier, by the waters running clear,
May have charms for the linnet or the bee;
Their happy hearts are blest, their peaceful hearts at rest,
But my true love parted from me.
Robert Burns, adapted by the composer