GOODBYE ENGLAND, COVERED IN SNOW

Laura Marling

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Goodbye England Covered In Snow - video thumbnail — Live at Celtic Connections 2017

Reviewing Marling's 2010 album "I Speak Because I Can" for Daily Vault wrote: "Many of Marling’s songs are seemingly drawn from literature or poetry, but 'Goodbye England (Covered In Snow)' is rare case where there’s little ambiguity about meaning. It’s simply a love letter to a wintery England, though Marling has revealed it was based on an experience of a childhood walk with her father, who asked her to bring him back to a particularly scenic snow-covered location before he died. As well as the song being pretty enough to make the idea of a freezing cold Britain sound appealing, it also provides the strongest lyric of the album."

In a 2011 interview, Marling told Laura Barton of The Guardian: "I think the song that's most me, and most how I speak, is Goodbye, England. Because it's so sort of soppy. And the line 'We will keep you little one' is so my family, because in my family I'm Little One, even though I'm about twice the size of them all. There's some lines like that in my songs that I think only people who know me would know where that sits with me. That's one of them."

St. Mary's Church in Eversley, North Hampshire — An article on Music Musings and Such titled "Modern Heroines, Part One: Laura Marling" asserts that "Goodbye England (Covered in Snow), was compelled by a family walk by a church in the winter." This church, St. Mary's Church in Marling's hometown of Eversley, might have been the one.

LYRICS

You were so smart then, in your jacket and coat
My softest red scarf was warming your throat
Winter was on us at the end of my nose
And I'll never love England more than when covered in snow

But a friend of mine says it good to hear
That you believe in love even if said in fear
Well, I'll hold you there brother and set you straight
I only believe true love is frail and willing to break

I will come back here, bring me back when I'm old
I want to lay here forever in the cold
I might be cold but I'm just skin and bones
And I'll never love England more than when covered in snow

I wrote my name in your book
Only God knows why
And I bet you that he cracked a smile
And I'm clearing all the crap out of my room
Trying desperately to figure out what it is that makes me blue
And I wrote in a big letter to you
And it's 22 pages front and back but it's too good to be used
And I tried to be a girl who likes to be used
I'm too good for that, there's a mind under this hat
And I called them all and told them I've got to move

I'm out now
It's too hard
I'm on my own
It's too hard
Feel like running
Feel like running
Running off
And we will keep you
We will keep you, little one
Safe from harm
Like an extra arm
You are a part of us

And you were so smart then, in your jacket and coat My softest red scarf was warming your throat
Winter will leave us, left the end of my nose
Well, goodbye, old England until next year's snow