Far in the Wood

History & Origin

"Far in the Wood" is one of the more mysterious and enchanting pieces in the nursery repertoire — a song that sits at the intersection of children's music and genuine folk magic. Its subject is a hidden well, deep in the forest, whose water grants immortal life to those who drink from it by moonlight.

The image of the magical well is one of the oldest in European folklore. Holy wells, wishing wells, and wells associated with healing or prophecy appear in Celtic, Norse, Germanic, and Classical traditions alike. In the British Isles, hundreds of holy wells were venerated long before Christianity, and many retained their associations with healing and wish-granting well into the nineteenth century, with people tying ribbons and rags to nearby trees as votive offerings.

The specific combination of moonlight and immortality in this song connects it to a broader tradition of lunar magic. The moon, with its visible cycle of waxing and waning, has been associated with time, transformation, and the boundary between life and death across many cultures. To drink from a well "by moonlight clear" is to operate at the threshold of the natural and supernatural.

The nonsense refrain — "Tiri, Tira, Tira la la la" — is characteristic of folk songs that have partly lost or deliberately withheld their literal meaning, using sound to carry the emotional and atmospheric weight that words cannot. Similar refrains appear in Welsh, Irish, and Scots Gaelic folk songs.

The promise at the heart of the song — "whoever drinks will live a thousand years" — is both a fairy tale conceit and a genuine expression of the human longing for permanence, sung gently to children who are just beginning to understand that time passes.