Flowers o’ the Forest

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Flowers o’ the Forest. Scottish lament, orig. words of which are lost, but many lines were incorporated into an 18th-cent. version by Jane Elliott. A new set of words was written c.1765 by Mrs Cockburn to a different tune but is now generally sung to old tune. The flowers are young men, the Forest a district of Selkirk and Peebles: the poem commemorates their death in battle. The tune, played by pipers, is a regular and moving feature of the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London.

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