Walking and Poetry (or Song) #6

Most of my walking is alone. And as I walk substantial distances, I am sometimes asked what I think about when I am walking. Whether in the city or in the countryside, my surroundings often occupy my thoughts. At other times, I am focused on the journey and anticipating the ups and downs of the route ahead. At other times, my mind goes into a kind of zen state, almost empty of thought. And then there are times when a song or tune comes into my head, and the rhythm accompanies my steps as I walk. It is that last case that prompted this blog post.

While I was walking a stretch of the Jura Höhenweg recently, a song called The Happy Wanderer came into my mind, and simply would not leave, coming back at intervals through the day. For this blog post, then, I decided to look more closely at the song.

In 1953, with Europe still in the shadow of World War 2, a children’s choir from Lower Saxony in Germany travelled to Wales to take part in a music festival. The choir, called the Obernkirchen Children’s Choir won the competition with a song called Die fröhliche Wanderer, and sometimes referred to as Mein Vater war ein Wandersmann.

The song is sometimes thought of as a German folk song, but it is not. The words were written in the early 19^th century by Florenz Friedrich Sigismund. The tune was added by Friedrich Wilhelm Möller sometime after World War 2. Möller’s sister was the conductor of the Obernkirchen Children’s Choir and brought the combination of words and music with the choir to Wales.

The winning entries at the music festival were broadcast on the BBC, and the song was popular with listeners. A record of the song entered the British pop music charts in January 1954, and it stayed in those charts for 26 weeks.

I suspect that that is how my own parents came to hear it on the radio at that time. Television did not come to Ireland until 1961. And I remember my mother singing the song as our family trooped across the heather of County Wicklow in Ireland. The rhythm is appropriate for a brisk stroll, lacking the formality of a march, but energetic nevertheless.

And that must be how it came from somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind while walking the Jura Höhenweg.

I give the words of the song here in both English and German.