The Irish Rovers - Willie McBride lyrics

Did they beat the drum slowly did they play the fife lowly, did they sound the d**h 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 gla** 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 k**ing the dying was all done in vain for young Willie McBride it's all happened again, and again, and again, and again and again