{"id":7379,"date":"2020-12-04T11:59:47","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T11:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/folksongandmusichall.com\/?page_id=7379"},"modified":"2020-12-04T12:10:10","modified_gmt":"2020-12-04T12:10:10","slug":"meeting-of-the-waters-the","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/folksongandmusichall.com\/index.php\/meeting-of-the-waters-the\/","title":{"rendered":"Meeting of the Waters, The"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
AKA<\/strong><\/td><\/td><\/tr>
First Published<\/td>1780-1800<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Writer\/composer<\/td>Thomas Moore<\/td>Roud<\/strong><\/td>RN30116<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Music Hall Performers<\/strong><\/td>numerous<\/td><\/tr>
Folk performances<\/strong><\/td>Source Singers<\/strong>
Bulger, Mrs 1950 Canada Newfoundland<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet\nAs that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet;\nOh! the last rays of feeling and life must depart,\nEre the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart.\n\nYet it was not that nature had shed o\u2019er the scene\nHer purest of crystal and brightest of green;\n\u2018Twas not her soft magic of streamlet or hill,\nOh! no, \u2014 it was something more exquisite still.\n\n\u2018Twas that friends, the beloved of my bosom, were near,\nWho made every dear scene of enchantment more dear,\nAnd who felt how the best charms of nature improve,\nWhen we see them reflected from looks that we love.\n\nSweet vale of Ovoca! how calm could I rest\nIn thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best,\nWhere the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease,\nAnd our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace.<\/pre>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
This is not specifically a music hall song, and falls in to the category of songs sung in the Halls that were written much earlier . It was a very  popular song in Victorian times, sung in Music Halls, minstrel shows and respectable ballad concerts.  It was also sung in the parlours of the respectable middle classes, it appears in Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies<\/em> described by Turner and Miall as “a foundation stone of 19th-century parlour balladry”.<\/em> Moore set his poem to the traditional Irish air The Old Head of Dennis.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have evidence from the diaries of Charles Rice that it was being sung in London’s tavern singing rooms in  1840, these were venues that in many cases evolved into Music Halls proper . Searches in London-based trade newspaper of the Halls, The Era<\/em>, seem to indicate it was widely sung in the Halls, but not associated with any one particular singer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was widely printed in songbooks and broadsides on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
You can hear Mrs Bulger sing it here: at the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n