Smile In Your Sleep (Hush Hush)
Lyrics, Jim MacLean
Tune, Mist Covered Mountains
Chorus
Hush, hush, time to be sleeping
Hush, hush, dreams come a-creeping
Dreams of peace and of freedom
So smile in your sleep, bonny baby
Once our valleys were ringing
With songs of our children singing
But now sheep bleat till the evening
And shielings lie empty and broken
We stood with heads bowed in prayer,
While factors laid our cottages bare,
The flames licked the clear mountain air,
And many were dead by the morning.
Where is our proud highland mettle
Our troops once so fierce in battle
Now stand, cowed, huddled like cattle
And wait to be shipped o'er the ocean
No use pleading or praying
For gone, gone is all hope of staying
Hush, hush, the anchor's a-weighing
Don't cry in your sleep, bonny baby
This song tells the story of the Highland Clearances, when in the late 18th and early 19th centuries England decided to evict the small landowners from the Scottish Highlands in order to make way for large-scale sheep farming. This was a very sad part of Scottish history, and the tune matches the mood of the song.
The tune is from the slow air, also known as “The Mist Covered Mountains of Home.” This air is from an older song in Scots Gaelic “Chi Mi Na Morbheanna” (I will see the great mountains).
see Notes from Mudcat