“Bitter Green” was written by Gordon Lightfoot, who composed it during a 1968 trip to London and recorded it that year. The song grew out of a period of personal strain in Lightfoot’s own life.
The song is a ballad of waiting and loss. A woman known as Bitter Green roams the hills above a town for years, watching for a lover who never returns. The seasons turn, she grows old and dies, and at last a weary stranger — the lover, come too late — kneels and weeps at her grave.
Lightfoot’s songs have long been favored by bluegrass interpreters.
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