The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #72950   Message #6579
Posted By: LaMarca
10-Jun-97 - 04:56 PM
Thread Name: Lyr ADD: Lads o' the Fair (Brian McNeill)
Subject: Lyr Add: LADS O' THE FAIR (Brian McNeill)
Here's "Lads O' the Fair" by Brian McNeill (from memory; may be slightly folk processed as I'm American and have Anglo-Americanized some of the Scots):

Come, bonny lass, lie near me,
And let the brandy cheer ye,
For the road from Fife to Falkirk's long
And cold and wet and weary.
My trade, it is the weavin'
From the bonny toon (town) o' Levin (sp?) And we'll drink to the lads who'll buy our cloth
(or "drink a health to the farmer's wives"; can't remember which)
In Falkirk town, the morn.

CHORUS:

Come, Geordie, hold the pony,
For the path is steep and stony
And it's three long weeks from the Isle of Skye
And the beasts are thin and bony.
We'll take the last o' the siller (silver)
And we'll buy ourselves a gill or two
And we'll drink to the lads who'll buy our kye
In Falkirk town, the morn.

Stand here and I'll show ye,
There's the town below ye
But we'd best bide here in the barn tonight
For the nightwatch dinna know ye.
My brother, he's a ploughman,
And I'm for the feein' now, man,
So we'll drink to the price o' the harvest corn
In Falkirk town, the morn.

Oh, the work of the weaver's over,
Likewise, the days o' the drover
And the ploughboy sits on a tractor now,
Too high to smell the clover.
Oh, the workin's no so steady,
But the lads are ae still ready,
To drink a health to the working man
In Falkirk town the morn.