Fairport Convention
She moves through the fair (What we did on our holidays)
By Marcel Veltman
Who can say something sensible about the origin of this song? Many people believe it is a
mediaeval traditional, but problably it was made up somewhere in the 19th century just to
sound like one. There are even rumours that it is a complete hoax, brought into being by
a young American named Randy Newman, long before he himself outfamed this song and
everyone who ever sang it. If this is true, he never claimed the joke, nor the royalties
when The Simple Minds took the melody for their mega-selling hitsingle 'Belfast Child'
D, C, G, D,
D
My young love said to me
C D
My mother don't mind
And my father won't sligh you
C D
For your lack of kind
C D
And she laid her hand on me
C Am
And this is she did say
C D
It will not be long love
C D
Till our wedding day
D, C, Am, C, D, C, G, D
And she went away from me
She moves through the fair
And fondly I watched her
Move here and move there
And then she went homeward
Only one star awake
Like a swan in the evening
Moves over the lake
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
Oh, it will not be long love
Till our wedding day