Divine Pitch Musings: A Tree Song (Oak and Ash and Thorn)

Next to the toilet at my best friend’s house was the Rudyard Kipling poem If-, beginning “If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you”. I had an inclination towards memorising things as a kid and I took a fancy to it. This did not do my social status any good.

In Classical music, it turned out that only the big-shot soloists played from memory, while the “rank and file” relied on reading, and I knew where I was headed. Whereas in the singing session at Wellington Folk Festival, most of the ordinary folks (who probably wouldn’t be called “rank and file”) relied on memory.

“Oak and Ash and Thorn” is one of those session songs with a singable chorus and lots of verses that someone remembers. In the late covid era, I decided that becoming someone who remember verses would help me to keep my head when all about are losing theirs. It was a few years after Stephen had come up with the same plan. This was one of the first songs that Divine Pitch learnt together.

The poem by Rudyard Kipling was called A Tree Song. Peter Bellamy wrote the tune that makes the words even more to chew on, but so pleasantly worth it. He recorded an album of Kipling’s poems set to tunes (including our last song Poor Honest Men) in the ‘60s and was finally allowed to release it in the ‘70s.

A Tree Song (Oak and Ash and Thorn) - Words by Rudyard Kipling¹, Tune by Peter Bellamy

Lyrics:

Of all the trees that grow so fair,

Old England to adorn,

Greater are none beneath the Sun,

Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs,

(All of a Midsummer morn!)

Surely we sing no little thing,

In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Oak of the Clay lived many a day,

Or ever AEneas began.

Ash of the Loam was a lady at home,

When Brut was an outlaw man.

Thorn of the Down saw New Troy Town

(From which was London born);

Witness hereby the ancientry

Of Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Yew that is old in churchyard-mould,

He breedeth a mighty bow.

Alder for shoes do wise men choose,

And beech for cups also.

But when ye have killed, and your bowl is spilled,

And your shoes are clean outworn,

Back ye must speed for all that ye need,

To Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Ellum she hateth mankind, and waiteth

Till every gust be laid,

To drop a limb on the head of him

That anyway trusts her shade:

But whether a lad be sober or sad,

Or mellow with ale from the horn,

He will take no wrong when he lieth along

'Neath Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,

Or he would call it a sin;

But - we have been out in the woods all night,

A-conjuring Summer in!

And we bring you news by word of mouth-

Good news for cattle and corn-

Now is the Sun come up from the South,

With Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs

(All of a Midsummer morn!)

England shall bide till Judgment Tide,

By Oak, and Ash, and Thorn!

1. For notes on the references to the mythic history of England contained in Kipling’s poem, here is a link to the Kipling Society.