A Bright and Rosy Morning

A Bright and Rosy Morning by A Sunday Song

I racked my brains over which song to start with, for some reason every song connected to January that I know is miserable! In the end I went for 'On a bright and rosy morning' which I found whilst flicking through 'The Foggy Dew': the third book of songs collected in Dorset and Hampshire by Gardiner and the Hammond Brothers edited by the late Frank Purslow. Though not strictly January based, I was reminded of it after reading about the New Year hunts; I love songs that celebrate the countryside and, notwithstanding my views
on hunting today or those of others, this is one of those songs, with its final refrain, that inspires the sort of joy of the new day that folk songs seem to hold so simply and give so gracefully.

This is a song that appears around and about in various guises, such is the case of any good song in the folk canon!

On a bright and rosy morning the sun shone o'er the hills
Just as the day was dawning across the meadows and fields
   [Whilst the merry, merry, merry horn cries 'come, come away'
    It's awake from your slumbers and behold some new day.] x2

The fox rose from his cover, he seem'd for to fly,
Our horses at full speed. my boys, our hounds in full cry

He led us a chase, my boys, for fifty long miles,
Over hedges and ditches, over gates and over stiles

Our day's sport being over, our horses at their ease,
We will call for a bowl, my boys, to drink when we please

Tim