(36) Joan Baez John Riley HD You Tube

Joan Baez sings the traditional song John Riley (Roud, 264) from her selftitled 1960 Vanguard album. This version by Joan Baez popularized the song in the 1960s folk revival. The song lyrics are in the video and listed below. The following information on the song is from Wikipedia: The song is derived from Homer s Odyssey, filtered through the 17th century English folk ballad tradition, and tells the story of a prospective suitor who asks a woman if she will marry him. She replies that she cannot because she is betrothed to John Riley, who has gone away over the seas. He persists, asking her whether Riley is worth waiting for and suggesting that he may have drowned, been killed in war, or married another woman. She maintains that she will continue to wait for him, irrespective of his possible fate. In the last stanza, the suitor reveals that he is in fact John Riley, returned from the seas, and has been testing his beloved. The song s theme, that of the disguised true lover qu