The Dubliners - The Old Man lyrics

At the turning of the century I was a boy of five My father went to fight the Boers and never came back alive My mother left to bring us up no charity would seek So she washed and scrubbed and brought us up on 7/6 a week When I was twelve I left the school and went to find a job With growin' kids my ma was glad of the extra couple of bob I know that better schooling would have stood me in good stead But you can't afford refinements when you're struggling for your bread And when the Great War came along I didn't hesitate I took the royal shilling and went off to do my bit I fought in mud and tears and blood three years or thereabout Then I copped some gas in Flanders and was invalided out And when the war was over and we'd finished with the guns I got back into civvies and I thought the fighting done I'd won the right to live in peace but I didn't have no luck For soon I found I had to fight for the right to go to work In 'twenty-six the General Strike found me out on the street For I'd a wife and kids by then and their needs I couldn't meet But a brave new world was coming and the brotherhood of man But when the strike was over we were back where we began I struggled through the 'Thirties out of work now and again I saw the Black Shirts marching and the things the did in Spain But I raised my children decent and I taught them wrong from right Then Hitler was the lad that came and showed them how to fight My daughter was a land girl, she got married tae a Yank They gave my son a gong for stopping one of Rommel's tanks He was wounded just before the end and convalesced in Rome Married an Eyetye nurse and never bothered to come home My daughter writes me once a month a cheerful little note About their colour telly and the other things they've got She has a son, a likely lad, he's nearly twenty-one Now she says they've called him up to fight in Vietnam We're living on the Pension now and it doesn't go too far Not much to show for a life that seems like one long bloody war When you think of all the wasted lives it makes you want to cry I don't know how to change things but by Christ we'll have tae try