Willie McBride - The Fureys, Davey Arthur

Well, how do you do young Willie McBride?

Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?

And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun

I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done

I see by your gravestone, you were only nineteen

When you joined the great call-up in nineteen sixteen

And I hope you died quick, and I hope you died clean

Or young Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

(chorus)

Did they beat the drums slowly?

Did they play the fife loudly?

Did they play the death march as they lowered you down?

Did the band play the Last Post and chorus?

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 and forever behind a glass frame

In an old photograph, torn, battered and stained

And faded to yellow, in a brown leather frame

Well the sun, now it shines, on the green fields of France

As the warm summer breeze, that makes the red poppies dance

And look how the sun shines from under the clouds

There’s no gas, no barbwire, there’s no guns firing now

But here in this graveyard that’s still no-man's land

The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand

To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man

To a whole generation, that was butchered and damned

Young Willie McBride, I can’t help wondering why

Do those that lie here know why that they died?

And did they believe when they answered the call

Did they really believe that this war would end war?

The sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain

The killing and dying were all done in vain

Young Willie McBride, it all happened again

And again, and again, and again, and again