> Folk Music > Songs > I Wandered by the Brookside

I Wandered by the Brookside

[ Roud 2418 ; Ballad Index CrMa035 ; VWML AW/3/143 ; Bodleian Roud 2418 ; Wiltshire 601 , 835 ; Richard Monckton Milnes, 1^st Baron Hougthon (1809-1885)]

Bob Copper printed I Wandered by the Brookside in the appendix “Old Songs From Rottingdean” of his 1976 book Early to Rise.

The Portway Pedlars (Len and Barbary Berry) sang I Wandered by a Brookside [VWML AW/3/143] in 1984 on their Greenwich Village album of songs of Oxfordshire collected by Alfred Williams, In Greenwood Shades. The tune is by Barbary Berry. Their son and daughter-in-law Bob and Gill Berry sang it in 2006 on their WildGoose album BitterSweet. This video shows them at Bath Folk Festival in 2011:

Whippersnapper sang I Wandered by a Brookside on their 1987 album Tsubo.

Archie Fisher sang I Wandered by a Brookside in 1988 on his album Sunsets I’ve Galloped Into….

Fairport Convention sang I Wandered by a Brookside on their 2002 album XVVV.

The Askew Sisters sang I Wandered by the Brookside on their 2019 CD Enclosure. They noted:

Whilst searching through the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library archives. Hazel [Askew] found this text collected by Alfred Williams from Miss Leah Serman of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, circa 1916 [VWML AW/3/143] . She was struck by the profound sense of disconnection that runs through the song, whether from the natural world or some deeper internal struggle, and in the absence of a melody, one quickly wrote itself. There is a wonderful openness and ambiguity in the lyrics, which felt unusual for a traditional song, and some further digging revealed some other traditional versions and broadsides with more words and a clearer narrative. This eventually led back to what appears to be the poem it originated from, The Brookside by Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton (1809-1885). We also later discovered that it was made famous by Eva Cassidy on her [Time After Time] album to a very different tune that Barbara Berry wrote.

Lyrics

Richard Monckton Milnes’s poem The Brookside

I wandered by the brookside,
I wandered by the mill;
I could not hear the brook flow,—
The noisy wheel was still;
There was no burr of grasshopper,
No chirp of any bird,
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.

I sat beneath the elm-tree;
I watched the long, long shade,
And, as it grew still longer,
I did not feel afraid;
For I listened for a footfall,
I listened for a word,—
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.

He came not,—no, he came not,—
The night came on alone,—
The little stars sat, one by one,
Each on his golden throne;
The evening wind passed by my cheek,
The leaves above were stirred,—
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.

Fast silent tears were flowing,
When something stood behind;
A hand was on my shoulder,—
I knew its touch was kind:
It drew me nearer,—nearer,—
We did not speak one word,
For the beating of our own hearts
Was all the sound we heard.

I Wandered by the Brookside in Early to Rise

I wandered by the brookside,
I wandered by the mill;
I could not hear the brook flow,
The noisy wheel was still;
There was no sound of grasshopper
Or sound of any bird,
And the beating of my own heart
Was the only sound I heard.

I sat beneath the elm-tree;
And watched its long, long shade,
And, as it grew still longer,
I did not feel afraid;
I listened for a footstep,
I listened for a word,
But the beating of my own heart
Was the only sound I heard.

He came not, no, he came not,
The night grew on alone,
The little stars sat, one by one,
Each on his silvery throne;
The evening wind passed by my cheeks,
The leaves fell here and there,
But the beating of my own heart
Was the only sound I heard.

Fast silent tears were flowing
As something stood behind;
A hand fell on my shoulder,
I knew the touch was kind:
He drew me nearer, nearer,
I could not speak one word,
And the beating of my own heart
Was the only sound I heard.