THE OLD MAN'S SONG (a.k.a. THE OLD MAN'S TALE)
Words by Ian Campbell; tune traditional, 'Nicky Tams'
As recorded by The Ian Campbell Folk Group on "The Times They Are a-Changin' " (1966)

1. At the turning of the century I was a boy of five.
Me father went to fight the Boers and never came back alive.
Me mother was left to bring us up; no charity she'd seek,
So she washed and scrubbed and scraped along on seven and six a week.

2. When I was twelve I left the school and went to find a job.
With growing kids me ma was glad of the extra couple o' bob.
I'm sure that longer schooling would 'a' stood me in good stead,
But you can't afford refinements when you're strugglin' for your bread.

3. And when the Great War came along I didn't hesitate.
I took the royal shilling and went off to do me bit.
I fought in mud and tears and blood, three years or thereabout,
Then I copped some gas in Flanders and got invalided out.

4. Well when the war was over and we'd settled with the Hun,
We got back into civvies and we thought the fighting done.
We'd won the right to live in peace but we didn't have such luck,
For soon we found we had to fight for the right to go to work.

5. In 'twenty-six, the general strike found me out on the streets,
Though I'd a wife and kids by then and their needs I had to meet.
For a brave new world was coming and the brotherhood of man,
But when the strike was over we were back where we began.

6. I struggled through the thirties, out of work now and again.
I saw the Blackshirts marchin' and the things they did in Spain,
But I brought me kids up decent and I taught them wrong from right,
But Hitler was the lad who came and taught them how to fight.

7. Me daughter was a land girl; she got married to a Yank,
And they gave me son a gong for stopping one of Rommel's tanks.
He was wounded just before the end and convalesced in Rome.
He married an Eyetie nurse and never bothered to come home.

8. Me daughter writes me once a month, a cheerful little note
About their colour telly and the other things they've got.
They've got a son, a likely lad; he's nearly twenty-one,
And she tells me now they've called him up to fight in Vietnam.

9. We're living on the pension now; 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'm not sure how to change things, but by Christ we'll have to try!


Judith Small's 'Mothers, Daughters, Wives' has a related theme, as do some of Eric Bogle's songs.