> Silly Sisters > Songs > Blood and Gold / Mohacs

Romanian Song (Blood and Gold)

[ Roud - ; DT ROMSNG ; words Andy Irvine, Jane Cassidy]

Andy Irvine recorded Romanian Song (Blood and Gold) with Lucienne Purcell singing for his 1980 Tara album Rainy Sundays…Windy Dreams. He noted on the album:

This one started as a Romanian song collected by Béla Bartók in the early part of this century. A friend of mine, Jane Cassidy from Kilkeel, Co. Down, and myself re-wrote it a few times and put it to a Bulgarian dance-song tune (When a dance is danced to singing, the singers themselves also dance). This song is in Paidushka rhythm 5/16.

and on the album’s 1989 CD reissue:

The Romanian Song (Blood and Gold) is nice, though I think I should have sung it myself. It’s in 5/16 as it was supposed to be. Anybody who recorded it subsequently didn’t quite get that and recorded it in 6/8. Pity…

Silly Sisters June Tabor and Maddy Prior sang Blood and Gold, with the instrumentalists seguing into Dan ar Braz’s tune Mohacs, in 1988 on their second album No More to the Dance which got its title from a phrase in this song. This track was also included in 2002 on the Topic anthology The Acoustic Folk Box. A live recording from the Maddy Prior, Family & Friends Christmas tour of 1999 was released in the following year on their CD Ballads and Candles.

Tine Claeys, Annemie Missinne, Annemie Ponseele and Veronique Merlevede sang Blood and Gold on Coope Boyes & Simpson and Wereldkoor Wak Maar Proper’s 1999 album Christmas Truce Kerstbestand.

Bill Jones sang Blood and Gold / The Universal Soldier on her 2000 album Turn to Me and on her 2002 album recorded at The Live Theatre in Newcastle on 2 December 2001, Live at the Live.

Tan Yows sang Blood and Gold on their 2012 album Undipped. They noted:

Originally a Romanian song collected by Bela Bartok in the early part of the 20^th century and rewritten by Jane Cassidy and Andy Irvine to a Bulgarian dance-song tune. It reflects the reality of war on the lives of young men.

Suthering sang Blood and Gold on their 2022 album If We Turn Away.

Kerry Smith sang Blood and Gold on her 2025 album When You Sing You Drive Away Grief.

Lyrics

Lucienne Purcell sings Romanian Song (Blood and Gold)

On rides a captain and three hundred soldier lads
Out of the morning mist and through the silent snow
Whistling gaily rides the captain at their head
Behind him soldier boys sadly weeping go

O lads of mine weep no more
You are gone to kill and die

For when you took my gold and swore to follow me
You sold away your lives and your liberty
No more you’ll till the soil, no more you’ll work the land
No more to the dance you’ll go and take girls by the hand

O mother weep for your son
He is gone to kill and die

You’ll weep, you’ll die by the keen edge of the sword
All alone by the muddy Danube shore
He gave the order for the drummer to beat their drums
That mothers all might know the life a soldier leads

O mothers weep for your sons
They are gone to kill and die

Unfurl your ragged banners and raise your pale young face
You’ll all go in the fire, there’ll be no hiding place
O mother hear that drumbeat in the village square
O mother that drum’s for me to go for a soldier there

Mothers, sisters, wives, weep for us
Marked as Cain we die alone

Silly Sisters sing Blood and Gold

On rides a captain and three hundred soldier lads
Out of the morning mist and through the silent snow
Whistling gaily rides the captain at their head
Behind him soldier boys sadly weeping go

O mother weep for your son
He is gone to kill and die

You’ll weep, you’ll die by the keen edge of the sword
All alone by the muddy Danube shore
He gave the order for the drummers to beat their drums
That mothers all might know the life a soldier lives

Mothers, sisters, wives, weep for us
Marked as Cain we die alone