About This Song

The Ash Grove is a traditional Welsh air, known in Welsh as Llwyn Onn. The tune first appeared in print in 1802 in The Bardic Museum, a collection put together by the harpist Edward Jones. A few years later it was published with words about a sailor's love for Gwen of Llwyn, who dies by the end of the song. The English words most people know came later. Thomas Oliphant wrote them for John Thomas's 1862 Welsh Melodies, which printed his verses alongside Welsh lyrics by Talhaiarn. John Oxenford wrote another English set that borrows Oliphant's first verse.

Nobody owns the melody, so it has carried many texts. One of the best known is Katherine K. Davis's 1939 Thanksgiving hymn "Let All Things Now Living." The tune may also be older than its first printing: a similar air turns up as "Cease Your Funning" in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera of 1728.