Well how do you do, young Willie McBride?
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Do you mind if I sit here down by your grave side,
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A rest for a while in the warm summer sun?
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I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done.
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I see by your gravestone that you were only 19
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When you joined the great call up in 1916.
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Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean.
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Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
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CHORUS:
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Did they beat the drum slowly?
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did they play the pipes lowly?
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Did they play the death march as they lowered you down?
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Did the band play 'The Last Post' in chorus?
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Did the pipes play 'The Flowers of the Forest'?
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Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
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In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined.
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And although you died back in 1916,
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In that faithful heart are you forever 19.
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Or are you just a stranger without a name
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Enclosed behind some glass-pane
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In an old photograph, battered and stained
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And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
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Did they beat the drum slowly?
|
did they play the pipes lowly?
|
Did they play the death march as they lowered you down?
|
Did the band play 'The Last Post' in chorus?
|
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers of the Forest'?
|
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The sun, oh it shines on the green fields of France,
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The warm summer brease makes the red poppies dance.
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And look how the sun shines from under the clouds.
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No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
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But here in this graveyard, it's still No Man's Land
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And the countless white crosses in mute witness stand.
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To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
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To the whole generation that was butchered and downed.
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|
Did they beat the drum slowly?
|
did they play the pipes lowly?
|
Did they play the death march as they lowered you down?
|
Did the band play 'The Last Post' in chorus?
|
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers of the Forest'?
|
|
-----------------
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Green Fields Of France
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Prussian Blue |