Liam Clancy - Green Fields Of France video free download

CHORUS

Did they beat the drum slowly did they play the fife lowly,

did they sound 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"

Well how do you do young Willie McBride?

do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside

and rest for a while 'neath the warm summer sun

I've been walkin' all day and I'm nearly done

I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen

when you joined the great fallen of 1916

Well I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean

Willie McBride was it slow and obscene CHORUS

And the beautiful wife or the sweetheart for life

in some faithful heart are you forever enshrined

and although you died back in 1916

in that faithful heart are you forever nineteen?

or are you a stranger without even a name

enshrined forever behind a glass pane

in an ould photograph torn tattered and stained,

fading to yellow in a brown leather frame? CHORUS

Now the sun shines down on the green fields of France

a warm summer wind makes the red poppys dance

The trences have vanished under the plows,

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 stand mute in the sand

for man's blind indifference to his fellow man,

to a whole generation that was butchered and damned CHORUS

Now Willie McBride I can't help wonder why

Do those who lie here do they know why they died

Did they really beleive when they answered the call

did they really believe that this war would end wars

Forever this song of suffereing and shame

the killing the dying was all done in vain

for young Willie McBride it's all happened again,

and again, and again, and again and again