Ian Anderson - Mountain Men lyrics

The poacher and his daughter Throw soft shadows on the water in the night A thin moon slips behind them As they pull the net with no betraying light And later on the coast road, I meet them And the old man winks a smile And who am I to fast deny the right To take a fish once in a while? I walk with them, they wish me luck When I ship out on the Sunday from the kyle And from the church I hear them singing As the ship moves sadly from the pier Oh, poacher's daughter, Sunday best Two hundred brave souls share the farewell tear There's a house on the hillside, where the drifting sands are born Lay down and let the slow tide wash me Back to the land where I came from Where the mountain men are kings And the sound of the piper counts for everything Did my tour, did my duty. I did all they asked of me Died in the trenches and at El Alamein ...died in the Falklands on T.V Going back to the mountain kings Where the sound of the piper counts for everything Long generations from the Isles Sent to tread the foreign miles Where the spiral ages meet Felt naked dust beneath their feet Future sun called winds to blow And the past and present hard-eyed crow Flew hunting high and circling low over blackened plains of Eden There's a child and a woman praying for an end to the mystery Hoping for a word in a letter Fair wind-blown from across the sea To where the mountain men are kings And the sound of the piper counts for eveything There's a house on the hillside, where the drifting sands are born Lay down and let the slow tide wash me Back to the land where I came from Where the mountain men are kings And the sound of the piper counts for everything Where the real mountain men are kings And the sound of the piper counts for everything Feel the naked dust beneath my toes While the future sun calls winds to blow And the past and present black-eyed crow Flies hunting high and circling low Between dream mountains of our Eden