Track 2. Thousands are Sailing to Amerikay
Lyrics: traditional Irish
Music: Bruce
You brave Irish heroes wherever you be
I pray stand a moment and listen to me
Your sons and fair daughters are now going away
And thousands are sailing to America
The night before leaving they are bidding goodbye
And it's early next morning their heart gives a sigh
They do kiss their mothers and then they do say
Fare thee well, dearest father, we must now go away
So good luck to those people and safe may they land
They are leaving their country for a far distant strand
They are leaving old Ireland, no longer can stay
And thousands are sailing to America
Their friends and relations, their neighbours also
When the trunks they are packed up all ready to go
Their hearts will be breaking on leaving the shore
Fare thee well, dear old Ireland, we will ne'er see you more
So I pity the mother that rears up the child
And likewise the father who labours and toils
To try to support them he will work night and day
And when they are reared up they will go away
Track 3. Dreamer
Poetry: Don Blanding, Vagabond’s House 1928
Music: Marla & Bruce
I don’t suppose I’ll ever see
A dryad slipping from her tree
Nor hear the pulsing pipes of pan
Although sometimes I think I can
I don’t suppose I’ll ever see
A selkie slip into the sea
Nor see the moon-nymphs dance at night
And yet perhaps...perhaps I might
And once beside a blue lagoon
Beneath a witching tropic moon
I saw the flash of silver scales
The kind that grow on mermaid’s tails
I watch the waves break on the rocks
And in between the thundered shocks
I think that I can almost hear
The sirens singing sweet and clear
I don’t suppose I’ll ever see
These things that mean so much to me
But if I watch by night, by day
You cannot tell...perhaps I may
Track 4. The Lanterns of St. Eulalie
Poetry: Carman & Hovey, Last Songs from Vagabondia 1900
Music: Marla & Bruce
In the October afternoon
Orange and purple and maroon
Goes quiet Autumn, lamp in hand
About the apple-coloured land
To light in every apple-tree
The Lanterns of St. Eulalie
They glimmer in the orchard shade
Like fiery opals set in jade
And O when I am far away
By foaming reel or azure bay
In dream once more I shall behold
Like signal lights, those globes of gold
In crowded street or hot lagoon
Or under the strange austral moon
The running dikes, the brimming tide
Dark firs on Fundy side
When the homesickness comes on me
For the great Marshes by the sea
Crimson and russet and raw gold,
Yellow and green and scarlet old
In the October afternoon
Orange and purple and maroon,
Hung out in every apple-tree
The Lanterns of St. Eulalie
Track 5. Every Migrant is My Fellow
Poetry: Spring Song, Carman & Hovey, Songs from Vagabondia 1894
Music: Marla & Bruce
Make me over, mother April
When the sap begins to stir!
When thy flowery hand delivers
All the mountain-prisoned rivers
And thy great heart beats and quivers
To revive the days that were
Make me over, mother April
When the sap begins to stir!
Take my dust and all my dreaming
Count my heart-beats one by one
Send them where the winters perish
And the mornings dawn most fairish
Then some golden noon re-cherish
And restore them in the sun
Take my dust and all my dreaming
Count my heart-beats one by one!
Set me in the urge and tide-drift
Of the streaming hosts a-wing!
Breast of scarlet, throat of yellow
Raucous challenge, wooings mellow
Every migrant is my fellow
Making northward with the spring
Loose me in the urge and tide-drift
Of the streaming hosts a-wing!
Strong insistence, sweet intrusion
Vasts and verges of illusion
So I win, to time's confusion
That one perfect pearl of time
Shrilling pipe or fluting whistle
In the valleys come again
Fife of frog and call of tree-toad
All my brothers, five or three-toed
With their revel no more vetoed
Making music in the rain
Shrilling pipe or fluting whistle
In the valleys come again
Give me some old clue to follow
Through the labyrinth of night!
Clod of clay with heart of fire
Things that burrow and aspire
With the vanishing desire
For the perishing delight
Give me some old clue to follow
Through the labyrinth of night!
Make me over in the morning
From the rag-bag of the world!
Scraps of dream and duds of daring
Home-brought stuff from far sea-faring
Faded colors once so flaring
Shreds of banners long since furled!
Hues of ash and glints of glory
In the rag-bag of the world!
Track 7. May & June
Poetry: Carman & Hovey, Last Songs from Vagabondia 1900
Music: Marla & Bruce
May comes, day comes
One who was away comes
All the earth is glad again
Kind and fair to me
May comes, day comes
One who was away comes
Set his place at hearth and board
As they used to be
June comes, and the moon comes
Out of the curving sea
Like a frail golden bubble
To hang in the lilac tree
June comes, and a croon comes
Up from the old gray sea
But not the longed-for footstep
And the voice at the door for me
May comes, day comes
One who was away comes
Higher are the hills of home
Bluer is the sea
Track 8. From Sandwood Down to Kyle © 1970 David Goulder, Robbins Music
One Monday morn as I walked out
The wild birds for to see
I met a man upon the road
And asked for charity
Come home with me, you'll drink your fill
And comforts you shall find
And tell me why you walk the road
That leaves the hills behind
For time has spent the summer sir
And soon the leaves will fall
I hear the sound within the wind
That plays around your walls
The bird must flee the winter sir
She cannot stay behind
To build her nest upon the snow
How can I look for mine?
But if I had a hundred homes
To live in each a while
I'd build them all along the coast
From Sandwood down to Kyle
Track 9. Lonesome Robin ©1973 Bob Coltman
Rise up from your bed of straw
See if you can bend that short bow one last time
Speak from your wounds and say you don't care
You know it'll prey on your mind
Wherever your arrow it falls to the ground
Lay lonesome Robin down one last time
No more, Robin, no more
Your outlaw days are over
When you were a little boy
You had to go to bed early while the sun still shone
Just like sleep was the end of the world
And tomorrow would never never come
So now lonesome Robin won't you close your eyes
So that the sun it will rise one last time
It's funny how hot is the sun
Now that you can't run away to the shade
Just lie there and think of the deer you have run
And of all the games that you've played
And wondering what Marian's bound to do that's better
Than coming to see you one last time
And time's taken your time away
Time and deceptions have whittled you down
All of the dreams that ever you had
Have took to their heels and run
Hold on to whatever is closest to you
That's all lonesome Robin can do one last time
Track 10. A Sigh in a Gale
Lyrics for Sigh in a Gale are all excerpts from Dana Walrath's verse novel about the Armenian genocide, Like Water on Stone (2014), except where noted. Additional lyrics indicated by *
Music and additional lyrics by Marla
You’re looking for a donkey while sitting on its back
Stop wanting, your eyes will be open
Would you leave this land where music flows and break again your mother’s heart?
Sons hear, as eagles see
Both suffer when they cannot fly
Long deep notes pull me up to the sky
*A tear in the ocean
*A blink in the blackness
Our holy books differ by one prophet alone
You men are my brothers
Lydian melodies like oil flowed, Mother tongues in unison
Mystery and power come in through the quill
Flow through and shape me, like water on stone
Papa always played, but I did not hear the oud before
If my quill could pull laments from the strings of an oud
I thought then my heart might heal
We eagles sing no soothing songs
Our throats can only whistle
Answers shift to find new paths
like water flowing through stones
Where is there a tree not shaken by the wind?
Carpets fray at the edges, not where the weave is tight
In the center, It takes a knife to cut
Hate makes jagged spikes of light and blame can pierce the sky
*Like a tear in the ocean
*Like a blink in the blackness; blackness
*Like a sigh in a gale
Where the needle passes, the thread passes too
Thunder clouds don’t always bring rain
The sun it does not shine on one man keeping others in the dark.
