> Folk Music > Songs > Why Should I Sit and Sigh?

Why Should I Sit and Sigh? / Pulling Bracken

[ Roud V19171 ; Mudcat 12931 ; English words James Hogg]

Cinder Well and Jim Ghedi sang Pulling Bracken on their 2022 EP Cinder Well & Jim Ghedi. They noted:

Jim’s friend sent him a recording of this song sung by Isla Cameron, a Scottish singer raised in Newcastle. The song is sung both from the perspective of a fairy and the person he falls in love with, who collects bracken on the moors. Collecting bracken / foliage for crops was a traditional role for women.

Highlander’s Farewell, the fiddle tune played after, was learned from an Alan Lomax recording of Emmet Lundy (Grayson County, Virginia), in which Lundy explains “the piece was composed in the old country, where they had war in Scotland. And when the Highlanders took their departure from the Lowlands, a Highlander had a sweetheart in the Lowlands, and they just give him so long for to bid her farewell; and the low part of this represents the man and the high part, the lady.”

Lyrics

Cinder Well and Jim Ghedy sing Pulling Bracken

Why do I sit and sigh,
Pulling bracken, pulling bracken?
Why do I sit and sigh,
All alone and dreary?

When I see the plover rising
Or the curlew wheeling,
Then I trow my mortal lover,
Back to me come stealing.

Why do I sit and sigh,
Pulling bracken, pulling bracken?
Why do I sit and sigh,
On the hillside dreary?

O but there is something lacking
O but I am weary.
Come by blythe and bonny laddie,
O’er the hill to cheer me.

Why do I sit and sigh,
Pulling bracken, pulling bracken?
Why do I sit and sigh,
All alone and weary?