The Whole House Is Singing

I know she rose early, for I heard her sweet singing
Echoing over the flowering heath
She gathered the willow, the elder, the linden
The holly, the ivy twined into a wreath

Oh, the notes you are forming, I long to possess them
They leap from your tongue and ascend on the breeze
Had I risen early from bed in the morning
Then I would have hold of the notes you release

And she gave me the wreath and she sang like a starling
My fingers intwined in her feathery hair
But she shrugged me away and said Alasdair, darling
When a song's on the wind it belongs to the air

See Polly, she sings as she sits at the spinning wheel
Mary, she sings as she skips with her rope
Jonny, he sings as he fetches the herring creel
And Billy, he sings as he rolls down the slope

And the whole house is singing, The whole house is singing
The rafters are ringing, and the timbers are thrown
The whole house is singing, the whole house is singing
And I overhear them, and this is their song

We are stronger when the moon glows in the sky
And the moon causes the tide to rise and rise
And the weed carried upon the drawing foam
We will gather to bedeck our happy home