The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #166004   Message #3988149
Posted By: Gordon Jackson
19-Apr-19 - 04:34 AM
Thread Name: Origins: The Heights of Alma
Subject: ADD Version: The Heights of Alma
Here's the version recorded by Nic Jones. Note there's an extra beat in the chorus (there's also one in the last verse). I also have the tune, again different to what's in the Digitrad, and mostly in 4/4 but I don't know how to post it.


THE HEIGHTS OF ALMA

September last on the eighteenth day
We landed safe at the big Crimea
In spite of all the splashing spray
To cheer our hearts for Alma
That night we lay on the cold cold ground
No tent nor shelter to be found
And with the rain was almost drowned
Upon the Heights of Alma

Then Britain's sons may long remember
The glorious twentieth of September
We caused the Russians to surrender
On the Heights of Alma

Next morning a scorching sun did rise
Beneath the eastern cloudy skies
Our noble chief Lord Raglan cries
Prepare to march for Alma
Oh when the heights we hove in view
The stoutest heart it could subdue
To see the Russian warlike crew
Upon the Heights of Alma

Their city was well fortified
With batteries on every side
Our noble chief Lord Raglan cried
We'll get hot work at Alma
Their shot it flew like winter rain
When we their batteries strove to gain
Fifteen hundred Frenchmen slain
In the bloody gore at Alma

Our Scottish lads with sword in hose
Were not the last as you may suppose
But daring faced their daring foes
And gained the Heights of Alma
To Sebastopol the Russians fled
They left the wounded and the dead
The rivers there that they run red
From the blood was spilled on Alma

There was fifteen hundred Frenchmen I heard say
Had fell upon that fatal day
And eighteen hundred Russians lay
In the bloody gore at Alma
Now France and England hand in hand
What ne'er a foe could them withstand
So let it run throughout the land
The victory won at Alma