Lyr Add: Mama Wind (David Buckley)

Subject: Lyr Add: MAMA WIND (David Buckley)
From: GUEST,Rick Pollay
Date: 15 Nov 21 - 04:16 PM

MAMA WIND (re slave ships)
By David Buckley of Kimber’s Men (Retired) (written pre 2012)
Tweaked: "trade" replaced with "stain" in chorus

Oh-oh Mama Wind blow me home, blow me home
Oh-oh Mama Wind wash this stain from my soul

We take him from his home from his village and his kin
We beat him and we chain him for the color of his skin
A space of thirteen inches is all he has to lay
A space of thirteen inches in which he has to pray

Oh-oh Mama Wind blow me home, blow me home
Oh-oh Mama Wind wash this stain from my soul

The sound of the lash is the language that he heeds
His life is worth nothing but a handful of glass beads
Onboard this ship his brother, his mother, and his wife
Have all said goodbye to this unholy life

Oh-oh Mama Wind blow me home, blow me home
Oh-oh Mama Wind wash this stain from my soul

Three hundred on board is considered a great prize
But every face you look at, the light has left their eyes
Every inch onboard our ship is measured to a fee
And if they’re sick or dying we throw them in the sea

Oh-oh Mama Wind blow me home, blow me home
Oh-oh Mama Wind wash this stain from my soul

The faces that now haunt me won’t leave me night or day
Every painful lash I feel in every place I lay
Each tormented moment burns me through and through
I only pray this sickening ship will carry me home to you

Oh-oh Mama Wind blow me home, blow me home
Oh-oh Mama Wind wash this stain from my soul

Now the terrors come to me each night, for all the things I’ve done
The sickness that I feel inside means my time on earth has run
Let their memory be my witness, as tears run down my face
Let my God be the judge of me in my final resting place

Oh-oh Mama Wind blow me home … (X2)