I knew the traditional version, “Will Ye Go Lassie Go,” before any other. And yet as a whole, the song distills the spirit of enchantment, the experience of perfect, first love. This phrase sounds plaintive, the next hesitant, the next direct and strong. Along with changing up the song’s season, he sings almost every line with a different emotion. And most of them stick to the song’s original spring setting (“Oh the summertime is coming” versus Van’s “Well the summertime has gone”). But their versions tend to approach it with melancholic yearning or straight-take sincerity. It could also be some quality in Van’s voice, maybe the playful jazziness he brings to the song, a Scottish/Irish folk standard usually recorded under the title “Wild Mountain Thyme” or “Will Ye Go Lassie Go.” Joan Baez, Ed Sheeran, The Corries, Marianne Faithfull, and Rod Stewart are just a few other artists who’ve recorded it. Maybe it’s because I associate spring with hope, and hope with love - new or past, fleeting or undying, idyllic or otherwise. Van Morrison’s “Purple Heather” is a song about idyllic summer-end love, but I feel spring whenever I hear it.
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