Three unaccompanied songs this week, just for a change, all of them on a moorland theme.
Queen among the heather is a slightly romanticised account of a socially awkward encounter on the Scottish moors; a popular theme, to judge from the number of variants that exist.
Now westlin winds is one of Robert Burns’s most beautiful poems (a.k.a. “Song composed in August”); all about love and nature and bloodsports (he’s in favour of two of these).
Jake Thackray’s Old Molly Metcalfe is about someone else you might meet on the moors; her story doesn’t end well.
Fifty-Two Folk Songs 