Smile In Your Sleep (Hush Hush)
Words and music by Jim McLean Published by Duart Music London 1963
Sung by Bruce Davies
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 fired the clear mountain air,
And many lay 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 adapted from the pipe tune, Mist Covered Mountains, and the Scots Gaelic song “Chi Mi Na Morbheanna” (I will see the great mountains). see Notes from Mudcat