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Sweet Loving Friendship

[Peter Bellamy]

Mike and Norma Waterson sang Sweet Loving Friendship in the roles of Henry Cabell and Susannah Holmes in Peter Bellamy’s 1977 ballad opera The Transports. In the 1992 Whitby Folk Festival performance of The Transports, Eliza Carthy took over the role of Susannah. And Laura Hockenhull & Pete Morton sang this on the 2004 re-recording of The Transports.

The Dovetail Trio (Jamie Roberts, Rosie Hood and Matt Quinn) arranged Sweet Loving Friendship for three voices and recorded it in 2015 for their CD Wing of Evening.

Lyrics

Mike and Norma Waterson sing Sweet Loving Friendship

If you look out from some high, high window
You will see the sun set beyond the town;
You will see the rooks to the tree-tops screaming
And the wing of evening come folding down.

Between the morning and the evening,
Between the Springtime and the Winter drear,
There comes a time of new beginnings,
When sweet loving friendship drives away all fear.

There is many here they know naught but sorrow
And like the beasts they live from day to day.
But we can think on a bright tomorrow
Since sweet loving friendship drives all grief away.

All hope in prison, it soon will smother
If none will with you your sorrow share.
But we cling fast to one each other
And sweet loving friendship banishes despair.

Just like the sailor when his ship makes harbour,
Just like the traveller who finds an inn,
What care they if the wind blows harder
When they be safe and warm within?

No lonely convict can resist the darkness
Just as no sailor can the driving rain
But find a comrade for to share your fastness
And sweet loving friendship will ease your pain.

So if you look out from some high, high window
And see the sun set beyond the sky,
You need not mourn at the coming shadow
If some loving friend is standing nigh.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Wolfgang Hell who kindly provided me with the sleeve notes of the The Transports LPs. I changed a few words to the actual singing of Mike and Norma Waterson.