> Folk Music > Songs > Farewell to the Bonny Banks of Ayr / The Gloomy Night Is Gath’ring Fast

Farewell to the Bonny Banks of Ayr / The Gloomy Night Is Gath’ring Fast

[ Roud V20705 ; Robert Burns]

Corrina Hewat sang The Gloomy Night Is Gath’ring Fast in 1998 on the Linn anthology The Complete Songs of Robert Burns Volume 5.

Jim Malcolm sang Farewell to the Bonny Banks of Ayr on his 2011 CD Sparkling Flash. He noted:

While I was in the band Old Blind Dogs we worked on an instrumental version of this song, but it was never recorded. Burns was planning to go to Jamaica at the time he was writing the song, so I have always pictured him singing it in a iatin, rumba style.

Lyrics

Jim and Susie Malcolm sing Farewell to the Bonny Banks of Ayr

The gloomy night is gath’ring fast
Loud roars the wild, inconstant blast
Yon murky cloud is foul with rain
I see it driving o’er the plain;
The hunter now has left the moor
The scatt’red coveys meet secure
While I here wander prest with care
Along the lonely banks of Ayr.

The autumn mourns her rip’ning corn
By early Winter’s ravage torn
Across her placed azure sky
She sees the scowling tempest fly!
Chill runs my blood to hear it rave
I think upon the stormy wave
Where many a danger I must dare
Far from the bonny banks of Ayr.

’Tis not the surging billow’s roar
’Tis not that fatal, deadly shore;
Tho’ death in ev’ry shape appear
The wretched have no more to fear.
Farewell my friends, farewell my foes
My peace with these, my love with those
The bursting tears, my heart declare
Farewell, the bonie banks of Ayr!