Oft in the Stilly Night

Thomas Moore’s song of memory and loss, published in 1818 in the first volume of A Selection of Popular National Airs (with arrangements by John Stevenson), where Moore labeled the melody a “Scotch air.” The tune’s dotted Scotch-snap rhythms support that billing, and Scottish collections took it up — Kerr’s Merry Melodies (c. 1880s) even prints it as a strathspey. The song was reportedly a favorite of Abraham Lincoln and stayed in American parlor circulation through the nineteenth century, appearing in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s By the Shores of Silver Lake among Pa’s fiddle repertoire. Choral and art-song settings followed from Parry, Armstrong Gibbs, and Britten.