I have been a foster - by Alison West

Submitted by: Alison W.

I have been a foster is a setting for voices and piano of an anonymous Old English verse about a forester, or ‘foster’, who lives alone in the woods, and is content. My lockès been here = my place has been here; bygge = build.

I have been a foster long and many day:
My lockès been here.
I shall hang up my horn by the grene wode spray:
Foster will I be no more.

All the while that I may my bow bende
Shall I wedde no wife.
I shall bigge me a bowr at the wodes ende,
There to lead my life.

I wrote this song before lockdown, but I found it spoke to me in lockdown about the contentment I sometimes find in solitude, and being outside in the natural world. Because it was lockdown, I recorded myself singing/playing all of the parts.