When the choir to which I belong first started rehearsing “The Ash Grove” for a Celtic-themed concert in the spring of 2016, I thought, ‘Wait a minute–that tune is familiar. I’ve played it for church services.’ Turns out I was remembering “The Master Hath Come,” but two other hymns use the same tune, “Let All Things Now Living” and “Sent Forth by God’s Blessing.” Folk tunes are often used with varying lyrics; it’s a little ironic that this particular one made its way into the Christian hymnal, since the words most associated with it have pagan roots.
The original lyrics have to do with what’s usually called “a sense of place.” As a certain site builds up associations because of events that have happened there, the place itself becomes suffused with meaning. So the speaker says that he sees “a host of kind faces” looking down on him whenever the wind rustles the branches. First are his childhood friends, but they are just a memory. He often roves pensively in the lonely ash grove, at twilight or in the moonlight. Then he meets “the joy of my life,” and builds his home there, while blackbirds and bluebells add to the happy scene.
But now the song takes a darker turn. The speaker’s “laughter is over” as he moves into old age, and his step “loses lightness.” All he has are his memories of a happy past. The song ends with “other faces” bending to greet him, figures from the afterlife that are probably the otherworldly versions of the people he’s known on earth. And so he makes the ash grove his home one last time. I was reminded of the death of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, when people from his past appear to him to usher him into heaven.
But why an ash grove, particularly? A song fragment floated into my head, performed by one of those folk-singery voices and accompanied by some kind of droning instrument: “Sing oak and ash and thorn/All on a midsummer’s morn/Surely we sing of no little thing/In oak and ash and thorn.” Turns out my memory was pretty accurate: I was hearing the late folk singer Peter Bellamy with his group “The Young Tradition.” (No droning instruments, though, just the droning voices. Sorry! I can recognize the artistry of the performance without necessarily liking it.) Anyway, these three trees were supposedly tied in with the tree worship of the Druids, but folks, I hate to burst your bubble here: We have no real evidence that the Druids actually existed. As discussed in my first post on this concert, many of our ideas about ancient Celtic culture comes from isolated fragments that were later stitched together into legends and myths during the Middle Ages and especially during the 18th and 19th centuries. As our friend Wikipedia says, “Many popular modern notions about Druids have no connection to the Druids of the Iron Age and are largely based on much later inventions or misconceptions.”
Well, you might say, we have this historic and folkloric poem about the significance of these three trees, so there’s evidence for their use in ancient rites. Right? Um, no. The poem was written by none other than Rudyard Kipling, in his book Puck of Pook’s Hill, published in 1905, which is categorized as a work of historical fantasy. Each story is introduced by a poem, just like the stories in Kipling’s The Jungle Book. (I wrote about Eric Whitacre’s “Seal Lullaby” for a Christmas concert, which sets to music one of the JB‘s poems.) While we do have one story from the Roman Pliny the Elder in the first century AD that describes the worship of the oak tree with its accompanying mistletoe and uses the term “Druid” for the priests leading this worship, we don’t really know where he got his information or whom he’s really referring to. We do know that he never visited Britain itself.
But back to the song we actually sang for this concert. The tune is a folk melody that has been used for many songs other than the hymns I mentioned at the beginning of this post. There are several sets of words, both in English and in Welsh, that tell somewhat different stories. A somewhat typical version of the lyrics follows the course of a man’s life from childhood to death. Other versions are more focused on the love story, and one very dark plotline has a chieftain shooting an arrow at his daughter’s sweetheart but missing and instead killing the girl. There are legends about the sanctity of the ash tree, but, once again, we don’t have any hard evidence of their validity. The wood of an ash tree is very hard and fine-grained, often being used for walking sticks and, more to the point for the mistaken-killing story above, for arrow shafts. The bark and leaves have been used for various medicines. Is it specifically associated with Wales? Not that I could discern. It is a very common tree, though, along with the oak, in the British Isles. So we’ll just leave it at that.
Here’s a lovely rendition by a Welsh male choir:
The wonderful guys in the above video are singing in Welsh. Here are those lyrics plus the English translation:
Yn Nyffryn Llwyn Onn draw mi welais hardd feinwen
A minnau’n hamddena ‘rol byw ar y don;
Gwyn ewyn y lli oedd ei gwisg, a disgleirwen
A’r glasfor oedd llygaid Gwen harddaf Llwyn Onn.
A ninnau’n rhodiana drwy’r lonydd i’r banna,
Sibrydem i’n gilydd gyfrinach byd serch;
A phan ddaeth hi’n adeg farwelio a’r wiwdeg,
Roedd tannau fy nghalon yng ngofal y ferch.
Cyn dychwel i borthladd wynebwn y tonnau,
Ond hyfryd yw’r hafan ‘rol dicter y don;
Bydd melys anghofio her greulon y creigiau–
Un felly o’wn innau ‘rol cyrraedd Llwyn Onn.
A thawel mordwyo wnaf mwyach a Gwenno
Yn llong fach ein bwthyn a hi wrth y llyw;
A hon fydd yr hafan ddiogel a chryno
I’r morwr a’i Wenno tra byddwn ni byw.
Down yonder green valley where streamlets meander
When twighlight is fading I pensively rove;
Or at the bright moontide in solitude wander,
Amid the dark shades of the lonely Ash Grove;
‘Twas there, while the blackbird was cheerfully singing,
I first met that dear one the joy of my heart!
Around us for gladness the bluebells were ringing,
Ah! then little thought I how soon we should part.
Still glows the bright sunshine o’er valley and mountain,
Still warbles the blackbird its note from the tree;
Still trembles the moonbeam on streamlet and fountain,
But what are the beauties of Nature to me?
With sorrow, deep sorrow, my bosom is laden,
All day I go mourning in search of my love!
Ye echoes! oh tell me, where is the sweet maiden?
She sleeps ‘neath the green turf down by the Ash Grove.
Here’s a more enjoyable version of the folk song I referenced above, one with some great instrumentation:
Here’s the version of the lyrics that my choir sang:
The ash grove, how graceful, how plainly ’tis speaking,
the wind through its playing has language for me.
Whenever the light through its branches is breaking
a host of kind faces is gazing on me.
The friends of my childhood again are before me,
each step wakes a mem’ry as freely I roam,
With soft whispers laden its leaves rustle o’er me,
the ash grove, the ash grove again is my home.
Down yonder green valley where streamlets meander,
where twilight is fading I pensively rove.
Or at the bright noontide in solitude wander
amid the dark shades of the lonely ash grove.
‘Twas there while the blackbird was cheerfully singing
I first met that dear one, the joy of my heart.
Around us for gladness the bluebells were springing,
the ash grove, the ash grove that sheltered my home.
My laughter is over, my step loses lightness,
old countryside measures steal soft on my ears.
I only remember the past and it brightness,
the dear ones I mourn for again gather here.
From out of the shadows their loving looks greet me,
and wistfully searching the leafy green dome.
I find other faces fond bending to greet me,
the ash grove, the ash grove alone is my home.
© Debi Simons
