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My Dear Companion

[ Roud - ; Jean Ritchie]

Jean Ritchie sang her own song My Dear Companion in 1953 on a 10" 78rpm HVM album, and in 1956 on her Riverside album Saturday Night and Sunday Too.

Elspeth Cowie sang My Dear Companion on her 2023 album Who Knows Where the Time Goes?. She noted:

A haunting song of lost love, written and recorded by the late Jean Ritchie, possibly as an evolution of a much earlier traditional song that the collector Cecil J. Sharp reported hearing from Rosie Hensley in North Carolina, USA, in 1916 [VWML CJS2/9/2364] . Sharp’s transcription of the words and tune appeared in 1917 as The Dear Companion in English Folk Songs From the Southern Appalachians, publ. G.P.  Putnam’s Sons, New York and London, under their imprint The Knickerbocker Press.

Lyrics

Elspeth Cowie sings My Dear Companion

Oh have you seen my dear companion
For he means all this world to me
I hear he’s gone to some far country
And that he cares no more for me

I wish I was a swallow flying
I’d fly to a high and lonesome place
I’d join the wild birds in their crying
And think on you and your sweet face

Oh have you seen my dear companion
For he means all this world to me
But now the stars have turned against me
And he cares no more for me

And when the dark is on the mountain
And this world has gone to sleep
I will go down to the deep dark river
And I will lay me down and weep

Oh have you seen my dear companion
For he means all this world to me