Fare Thee Well My Dearest Dear

Our upload is titled "Fare Thee Well" and is most likely this song, but which recording it is, the 1976 Amaranth original or the 2023 version, is not confirmed. The original opened Amaranth (Harvest, August 1976), by Shirley and Dolly Collins and produced by Ashley Hutchings, with a dense baroque arrangement. She re-recorded it as the opener of Archangel Hill, 3:16, at Metway Studios in Brighton with Ian Kearey producing. The Quietus's Jim Hilton wrote in 2023 that the new version trades baroque instrumentation for guitar figures, with attentive guitar arpeggios bustling around the vocal line.

A summary of the Mainly Norfolk song page, which could not be opened in full, says it was collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1904 from Harriet Verrall at Monksgate near Horsham, Sussex, that it concerns a woman who cuts her hair, dresses as a man and goes to sea, and that Collins notes it is the only version she knows with Venice as the destination, ending unhappily. Others who recorded it include Carolyn Hester, the Trugs (1971) and Nic Jones. It is distinct from "Dearest Dear", on Folk Roots, New Routes (1964).