We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Traveling Woman

from A Woman's Way by Crosscurrents Music

/

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $1 USD  or more

     

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    signed by the artist on request - please make a note in Include a message to Crosscurrents Music at checkout. Apologies for the international shipping rates! Digital download is available.

    Includes unlimited streaming of A Woman's Way via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 3 days
    edition of 100 

      $10 USD or more 

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    14
    releases

    Get all 14 Crosscurrents Music releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Gudrid the Wanderer, Topophilia, From Boston Harbor, Saint Patrick's Day, Crossing the Bar, Set to the Music, She Drank Her Ale at the Bar, In Lilac Time, and 6 more. , and , .

    Excludes supporter-only releases.

    Purchasable with gift card

      $52.50 USD or more (25% OFF)

     

about

Martha McGill McCullough Horne: Wellesley, Sanibel, & Santa Fe, 1905-1997
Traveling Companion

My maternal grandmother lived to be 92, and always signed her letters (including her e-mail) "Grama TC" for "Traveling Companion." Family photos show Martha in her roadster at Mount Holyoke, where she majored in math in the Roaring Twenties; on a camel at the Pyramids; in a Hawaiian lei on a black sand beach; posed in front of Mount Fuji; at the wheel of a Maine windjammer; collecting petrified wood in Arizona or shells on Sanibel Island; and silhouetted against a robins-egg Caribbean sea. My favorite memory of her is in the Paris nightclub with the Japanese computer engineers from Yugoslavia, but that's another story.

I got my Guild 12-string guitar for a song--this song. Composed for Martha's eightieth birthday, it was sung at her memorial service, by her request.

lyrics

You were always a traveling woman
A spirit creative and free
You were born with a love of the wide open world
That you traveled your travels to see.

You were raised in the New England country
Rode horses in 1919
Then you went off to college to study mathematics
In summers served Cape Cod ice cream.

Then you journeyed to earn independence
Keeping books at Cornell had its charm
Single woman at thirty, you were married in June
Raised your kids on a New Hampshire farm.

And you raised them a traveling woman
A spirit creative and free
You raised them with love of the wide open world
That you traveled your travels to see.

At fifty-five, you were a Grama
At sixty you went round the world
Riding camels in Egypt and junks in Hong Kong
Twice the tales of those travels unfurled.

Then you passed on your gifts to another
Taught a child how to travel alone
Roamed the beach hunting wentletraps
Learning the birds
Making your love of nature my own.

For you were my traveling woman
A spirit creative and free
I was born with your love of the wide open world
That you traveled your travels to see.

From the bridge and the brook and the Big Rock
And the trees that you taught me to climb
I have journeyed through Europe, Alaska, West Indies
Growing stronger and braver each time.

And sometimes you are my companion
And sometimes I travel alone
But I'll always remember the lifetime we've shared
As I roam through this world on my own.

For now I am a traveling woman
The latest in a lineage of three
You gave me my love of the wide open world
Now you travel my travels with me.
Yes, you gave me your love and your wide open world
Now you'll travel forever in me.

credits

from A Woman's Way, released May 18, 2018

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Crosscurrents Music image

Crosscurrents Music Boston, Massachusetts

Lynn Noel brings traditional song and heritage arts online to create community. Lynn has a voice of striking clarity and power, equally at home in rhythmic chanteys and flowing ballads.

Lynn is a respected song session leader on both sides of the Atlantic and the producer and host of the Mermaid's Tavern online folk club. She is currently Program Chair of the New England Folk Festival (NEFFA). ... more

contact / help

Contact Crosscurrents Music

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like Crosscurrents Music, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Saxophonist Isaiah Collier chats about his new LP and the influence of Pharoah Sanders.
listen now