1
4
2m
Well how do you
do young Willie McBride,
5
4
1
Do you mind if
I sit here down by your graveside,
4
2m
And rest for
a while neath the warm summer sun,
5
4
1
I've been working
all day and I'm nearly done.
5 2m
I see by your
gravestone you were only 19,
5
4 5
When you joined
the great fallen in 1916,
1
2m
I hope you died
well and I hope you died clean,
5
4
1
Or young Willie
McBride was it slow and obscene?
5
4
1
Did they beat
the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly,
5
4
5
Did they sound
the dead march, as they lowered you down,
4
1 6m
Did the band
play the last post and chorus,
1
4
5 1
Did the pipes
play the Flowers of the Forest.
Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind,
In some faithful
heart is your memory enshrined,
Although you
died back in nineteen sixteen
In that faithful
heart are you forever nineteen
Or are you a
stranger without even a name,
Enclosed in forever
behind a glass frame,
In an old photograph
all torn, tattered, and stained,
And faded to
yellow in a brown leather frame.
The sun now it
shines on the green fields of France,
There's a warm
summer breeze that makes the red poppies dance,
And look how
the sun shines from under the trees,
There's no gas,
no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now.
But here in this
graveyard it's still "No Man's Land",
The countless
white crosses a mute witness stand,
To man's blind
indifference to his fellow man,
To a whole generation
that were butchered and damned.
Now young Willie
McBride I can't help wonder why,
Do all those
who lie here know why did they die,
And did they
really believe when they answered the call,
Did they really
believe that this war would end wars.
Well, the sorrow,
the suffering, the glory, the pain,
The killing and
dieing were all done in vain,
For young Willie
McBride it all happened again,
And again, and
again, and again, and again.
