This haunting lament comes from the great singer and songsmith Ewan MacColl, from a series of radio ballads that he put together in the 1960s with Charles Parker and Peggy Seeger. The Terror Time was part of his 1964 radio ballad, The Travelling People, which delved into the lives of Scottish Travellers. MacColl had, according to singer and folk collector A.L Loyd, the “great skill that he was able to capture the common tongue so well in his songs.” A committed socialist whose work always had political undertones, MacColl often wrote songs that spoke of the challenges of minorities and the oppressed, and is known by many for his songs on the life of Travellers, such as 30 Foot Trailer.
“The Terror Time” is a reference to the onset of winter and cold weather, when Travellers were often driven out of the areas where they had been staying and faced a harsher natural world, but more poignantly, a harsher human world. MacColl apparently heard the phrase from an elderly woman, and the song sprang from that idea. In our singing of the song, we think not only of Travellers, who still face discrimination, but of all those who are houseless, particularly in the winter. In our arrangement, we chose to sing the song in English rather than Scots. This decision was partially for linguistic clarity, but mainly because we wanted audiences to relate to it as a story that is happening in the present, rather than a historical or far away tale.
The heather will fade and the bracken will die
Streams will run cold and clear.
And the small birds will be going,
And it’s then that you will be knowing
That the Terror Time is near.
Where will you turn now and where will you bide
Now that the work’s all done?
For the farmer doesn’t need you
And the Council will not heed you,
And the Terror Time has come.
The woods give no shelter, and the trees are all bare
Snow’s falling all around.
And the children they are crying
For the bed on which they are lying
Is frozen to the ground.
The frost won’t lift and the stove won’t draw,
There’s ice in the water churn,
In the mud and snow you’re sloshing
Trying to do your bit of washing
And the kindling won’t burn.
When you need the warmth of your own human kind,
You pull near a town, but then
They say the sight of you’s offending,
And the police they are sending…
And you’re on the road again.
The song had a circuitous route within Windborne. Jeremy started singing The Terror Time while on tour with Northern Harmony in 2017 and then brought it back to Windborne. We wrote this arrangement, but shortly after we started to tour with it we were hired to sing in WGBH’s A Christmas Celtic Sojourn with Brian O’Donovan, and they wanted to include a version of the song in the 2018 show. The piece that ended up onstage came from a powerful collaboration with the incredible vocalist Hannah Rarity and instrumentalists in the cast, and now we’ve come full circle and are reviving our original arrangement.
We are pleased to release it as our first Patrons-only single – please let us know what you think! Also, keep your eyes open for a related video, as well as a little “behind-the-scenes” look at our process of arranging this piece.
As always, thanks for your support, it means so much to us!
In song and solidarity,
Jeremy, Lauren, Will, and Lynn
