The Folk Song Of The Week this time around is Sweet Sunny South. There are many more verses than what I sang on the video and it’s a great, great song. This is a mainstay at our monthly jams and I love to make it as long as possible.

Have fun with it and don’t forget to sing!

Sweet Sunny South MP3

Sweet Sunny South (PDF)

SWEET SUNNY SOUTH

[G]Take me back to the place where I first saw the light

To the sweet sunny south take me [C]home

[G]Where the mockingbirds sang me to rest ev’ry night

Oh, why was I [D7]tempted to [G]roam

I think with regret of the dear home I left
Of the warm hearts that sheltered me there
Of the wife and the dear ones of whom I’m bereft
For the old place again do I sigh

Take me back to the place where the orange trees grew
To my cot’ in the evergreen shade
Where the flow’rs on the river’s green margin may blow
And spread their sweet scent o’er the glade

The path to our cottage they say has grown green
And the place is quite lonely around
And I know that the smiles and the forms I have seen
Now lie ‘neath the dark mossy ground

Take me back, let me see what is left that I knew
Can it be that the old house is gone?
Dear friends of my childhood indeed must be few
And now I must face death all alone

But yet I’ll return to the place of my birth
Where the children have played ’round the door
Where they gathered wild blossoms that grew on the bank
That will echo our footsteps no more

Take me back to the place where I first saw the light
To The sweet sunny south take me home
Where the mockingbirds sang me to rest ev’ry night
Oh, why was I tempted to roam