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Updated 04/29/2013

 


Flowers of the Forest
Flowers of the Forest is an ancient Scottish folk tune. Although the original words are unknown, the melody was written down in c. 1615-25 in the John Skene of Halyards Manuscript as "Flowres of the Forrest," though it may have been composed earlier.

Several versions of words have been added to the tune, notably Jean Elliot's lyrics in 1756. Others include those by Alison Cockburn below. However, many renditions are played on the Great Highland Bagpipe; due to the content of the lyrics and the reverence for the tune, it is one of the few tunes that many pipers will only perform at funerals or memorial services, and only practiced in private or to instruct other pipers.

Jean Elliot (b. 1727), aided in part by popular poetry selections, framed the tune in 1756 as a lament to the deaths of James IV, many of his nobles, and over 10,000 men - the titular "Flowers of the Forest" - at the Battle of Flodden Field in northern England in 1513, a significant event in the history of Scotland.

She published it anonymously and it was at the time thought to be an ancient surviving ballad. However, Burns suspected it was an imitation, and together with Ramsay and Sir Walter Scott eventually discovered its author.

The song, written in Scots, is also known as The Floo'ers o' the Forest (are a' wede away) and describes the grief of women and children at the loss of their young men. In some ways the song echoes the poem Y Gododdin about a similar defeat in about 600.

The first verse of the song contrasts happier times with grief at the losses:

I've heard the singing, at the ewe-milking,
Lassies a-singing before dawn of the day;
But now they are moaning on every milking-green;
"The Flowers of the Forest are all withered away".

Sorrow and woe for the order sent our lads to the Border!
The English for once, by guile won the day,
The Flowers of the Forest, that always fought the foremost,
The pride of our land lies cold in the clay.

I've heard the singing, at the ewe-milking,
Lassies a-singing before dawn of the day;
But now they are moaning on every milking-green;
"The Flowers of the Forest are all withered away".
 

The tune is featured on “Spirit of the Glen” by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.  It accompanies the reading of the Poem, “For the Fallen” which has its own interesting story. 

The "Ode of Remembrance" is an ode taken from Laurence Binyon's "For the Fallen", which was first published in The Times in September 1914.

The seven-verse poem honored the World War I British war dead of that time and in particular the British Expeditionary Force, which had by then already had high casualty rates on the developing Western Front.  Over time, the third and fourth verses of the poem (although often just the fourth) were claimed as a tribute to all casualties of war, regardless of nation.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.