Who recorded 'O'Wally Wally' ??
Peter Anderson
The Music Director of the Coldstream Guards is asking for some help. Who
recorded 'O'Wally Wally', the New Seekers did it in the 70's but what other
recordings are there out there. The tune has at least six other names, two
later ones being 'When The Piper Plays' and 'Rambling Boy', it may have
originally been a Hymn.
--
Peter Anderson
D Robinson
second part to it. The CD is great and so is the tune. He calls it "The
Water is Wide"
Don
Peter Anderson wrote in message
<935146102.27107.2...@news.demon.co.uk>...
Grahame Davis
>
> I have posted this under another heading - just to get maximum response.
> recorded 'O'Wally Wally', the New Seekers did it in the 70's but what other
> recordings are there out there. The tune has at least six other names, two
> later ones being 'When The Piper Plays' and 'Rambling Boy', it may have
> originally been a Hymn.
>
> --
> Peter Anderson
Peter....
The hymn tune O Waly Waly is an old Somerset folks song and is used in
the New English Hymnal for the text of #423. It's also set to the words
"When the Piper Plays" all through the two video tapes which begin with
"Ladies from Hell". A musically literate person could easily lift the
hymn tune in G and re-arrange it for the chanter with appropriate
gracings. It is a lovely old tune and seems to remind me of Lord
Lovat's Lament...which can also be played either as a slow air or up
tempo march.
Good Luck...Grahame in Tucson (7 Piper's Society )
James Stewart
Burl Ives, who recorded it on at least two albums, on of which, if memory
serves, was the command performance (or some such monarchical claptrap) (no
offence intended, but really, sexual intercourse as a basis of government, I
hardly think so, even Bill Clinton never went that far).
Peter Anderson <pe...@bklands.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:935146102.27107.2...@news.demon.co.uk...
CGlendin
The King's Singers recorded it on a 1987 E.M.I. CD (CDC #7 47506 2) entitled
"Watching the White Wheat" . . . which also includes another great tune that
can easily be transcribed for the bagpipes : "Star of the County Down" (AKA :
"Maid with the Light Brown Hair)
Charlie Glendinning
Ashton, MD
Iain Cameron
<pe...@bklands.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>I have posted this under another heading - just to get maximum response.
>The Music Director of the Coldstream Guards is asking for some help. Who
>recorded 'O'Wally Wally', the New Seekers did it in the 70's but what other
>recordings are there out there. The tune has at least six other names, two
>later ones being 'When The Piper Plays' and 'Rambling Boy', it may have
>originally been a Hymn.
I have two recordings of "The Water is Wide" :-
The four and only Seekers - on Music for Pleasure MFP 1301 (1964)
Max Boyce - on EMI Records MB 103 (1977)
Whilst the song "The Water is Wide" may well have been found in
Somerset (where most of the early song collectors looked) the tune
Waly, Waly, is very much older. Johnson published it in the second
volume of "Thirty Scots Songs, the Words by Allan Ramsay" in about
1772. Ramsay must have written his verses before 1724, when he
published his Tea-Table Miscellany. This was a collection of new, or
revised, lyrics to well known scots airs. Whilst a number of his songs
are clearly all his own work, this one has a number of part verses
which are clearly "from the tradition". That must put the original
song, and hence the tune, back before 1700 (and so clearly it was not
a hymn tune !).
From a piping point of view, the first part of Johnson's version of
the tune needs a high B, which was common enough on the pipes of that
time, and a C natural, which presumably was possible with
crossfingering. The second part needs F natural as well, and has one
excursion to high C. It doesn't sound like a pipe tune.
Iain Cameron