Traditional English melody

O WALY WALY belongs to English folk tradition rather than to a single identifiable composer. Its name is associated with an older family of British songs about love and loss. Words from that song family appeared in Allan Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany in the early eighteenth century, but the familiar modern melody should not simply be dated to that printing; words and tunes circulated in multiple combinations within oral tradition.

Folksong collector Cecil Sharp and the Reverend Charles Marson published the melody in Folk Songs from Somerset in 1906 after collecting it from a Somerset singer. The traditional form is in triple meter and is now also widely recognized through The Water Is Wide. Its balanced long-meter phrases have made it adaptable to many hymn texts.

Brian Wren selected this melody when he wrote When Love Is Found in 1978 and described it as easy to accompany on guitar. Many hymnals retain the traditional tune under the title O WALY WALY or THE WATER IS WIDE. The melody itself is public domain, but individual harmonizations and adaptations may be protected. Hal H. Hopson’s GIFT OF LOVE, used with Wren’s words in some hymnals, is a distinct copyrighted quadruple-meter arrangement rather than the source of the folk melody.