She Moved through the Fair

by **Madra Rua** Fri Aug 13, 2010 1:54 pm

My young love said to me, "My mother won't mind
And my father won't slight you for your lack of kine"
And she stepped away from me and this she did say:
“It will not be long, love, till our wedding day"

As she stepped away from me and she moved through the fair
And fondly I watched her move here and move there
And she turned homeward with one star awake
Like the swan in the evening moves over the lake

The people were saying, no two e'er were wed
But one had a sorrow that never was said
And I smiled as she passed with her goods and her gear,
And that was the last that I saw of my dear.

Last night she came to me, my dead love came in
So softly she came that her feet made no din
And she laid her hand on me and this she did say
"It will not be long, love, 'til our wedding day"

“She Moved Through the Fair”, along with “Greensleeves”, is one of the earliest love songs that we still sing today. The tune dates back to Medieval times, and the words were probably written in the mid 1600s.

Because it’s been around so long and is, after all, a folk song, singers have had plenty of time to tailor the song to their own tastes, and now we have so many variations on the original theme that we will never know for sure what the first iteration of the song truly was. Even the title has many names: “She Moved Through the Fair”, “Our Wedding Day”, “My Young Love Said to Me”, “Out of the Window” and even "White Summer" all refer to the same song.

But let’s deal with the version printed above.

Two lovers meet at a village festival. She assures him that even though he is not a man of means; her parents will still let them get married. But - - “The people were saying, no two e'er were wed But one had a sorrow that never was said” - - her parents force her to marry someone more suitable, and she does so to be obedient, even though she loves another. After the ceremony, however, she cannot bear being parted from her true love and kills herself. In the last verse, the young woman’s ghost comes to her lover in a dream, still believing that they will be married.

A word about the second line: “And my father won't slight you for your lack of kine". In some versions, the last word is “kind” instead, but both basically mean the same thing. In early Ireland, the number of cattle a person possessed was a measure of their wealth, and kine is an archaic word for cows. The people who believe the word is “kind” say that “lack of kind” means “lack of well bred kin”. I prefer the first theory myself. This song was handed down to us in an oral tradition, and it’s easy enough to hear a word incorrectly when learning a song.

Who knows for sure? A gorgeous song in an case. Here's a 1997 version by Sinéad O'Connor, which omits the third verse, and changes the song from very sad to wistful: