Song of the Week – Old King from the Northern Sea
This is one of the first traditional songs I learned from a book. I feel I was fortunate in that we learned many traditional and Early American songs from my parents and at school. This was one I learned on my own from a book of camp songs. It is also probably a variation of Childs Ballad #10, “The Twa Sisters,” though this was the title from the songbook.
I would also note that I shorten the song by compressing two verses into one (A B C D) instead of the original structure of repeating the first line three times and then singing the second (A A A B C C C D.) However, since the song has an odd number of verses, you can hear the original structure on the last verse.
Old King from the Northern Sea
Old King from the Northern Sea by Glen E Hammer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Not a Bard 