(This post was originally written in my secret blog on January 1, 2013, but I wasn’t ready to share it at the time).
I heard this for the first time just now, in the background of a video called “The Wounded Healer”, about which I read in this thread on a fb group called Highly Sensitive Souls:
It is the first song to which I have been able to listen without feeling agony, in the past week or two… I don’t know how long. I’ve lost track of days. I am enveloped in darkness.
I do not feel happy. The whole tone of this song somehow fits as background music for the way I feel inside. Not the lyrics – just the sound.
I assume the lyrics to be something pagan, but I am putting my own meaning to them as MY Lord is THE Lord, and HE is the creator of all the things about which the song sings. I do not partake of pagan things, but rather I appreciate that which God has created.
Music and Lyrics by Loreena McKennitt
When in the Springtime of the year
When the trees are crowned with leaves
When the ash and oak, and the birch and yew
Are dressed in ribbons fair
When owls call the breathless moon
In the blue veil of the night
The shadows of the trees appear
Amidst the lantern light
Chorus:
We’ve been rambling all the night
And some time of this day
Now returning back again
We bring a garland gay
Who will go down to those shady groves
And summon the shadows there
And tie a ribbon on those sheltering arms
In the springtime of the year
The songs of birds seem to fill the wood
That when the fiddler plays
All their voices can be heard
Long past their woodland days
Chorus:
We’ve been rambling all the night
And some time of this day
Now returning back again
We bring a garland gay
And so they linked their hands and danced
Round in circles and in rows
And so the journey of the night descends
When all the shades are gone
“A garland gay we bring you here
And at your door we stand
It is a sprout well budded out
The work of Our Lord’s hand”
Chorus:
We’ve been rambling all the night
And some time of this day
Now returning back again
We bring a garland gay
Chorus:
We’ve been rambling all the night
And some time of this day
Now returning back again
I can listen to it endlessly – very beautiful music … Highly sensitive people can be highly creative and very passionate about whatever they like … and about life.