The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #164459   Message #3936620
Posted By: Domdaniel
11-Jul-18 - 05:14 AM
Thread Name: Lyr ADD: 'When/If We had the Land!'
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: 'When/If We had the Land!'
Hello everyone. I started transcribing the lyrics today. I'm happy that I have most of it, but there are some words/lines which i just can't make out. Can anyone else help out and fill in the blanks for me?

If your up to try, here are the recordings I've been working from:



And this is what I have so far of the lyrics, with ????s for unknowns:


WE WANT THE LAND

We want folk in the fields and smoke in the lanes
Not villages left empty by commuter trains
We want real rural life not a picture postcard
And we want the land

We are farmers and grafters and we're hard working souls
And we don't want employment or to do what we're told
Want to build a new future with our own bare hands
And we want the land

Well we can't pay house prices and we can't pay the rent
But we can tow an old trailer we can put up a tent
We can make the farmyards and fields our new homes
If we had the land

We could work fields by hand from morning till late
Without combines or tractors or glycol phosphate
????
If we had the land

And the woodlands could ring with the sound of the axe
We'd carry cartloads and van loads and loaves on our backs
And we'd take what we needed and let it grow back
If we had the land!

And the villages would whistle with work life once more
???
And the late bus to town wouldn't run anymore
If we had the land

With scrap metal old floorboards and fresh coppiced wood
We'll build a ramshackle England where the old one once stood
And it wouldn't be perfect but it would be good!
If we had the land

So if you ??? what I'm singing or you just hate your job
You like manual labour or upsetting snobs
Join the raggle taggle convoy that they call a mob
And cry we want the land


Finally, I know nothing about music notation at all but if anyone wants to transcribe(?) or notate(? again) the tune for the database that would be really great!

Blues skies, thanks everyone, Dom