Great folk song lyrics

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: PHJim
Date: 10 Apr 10 - 10:55 PM

They say I am feeble with age, Maggie
My steps are less sprightly than then
My face is a well written page, Maggie
But time alone was the pen.
They say we are aged and grey, Maggie
As spray by the white breakers flung
But to me you're as fair as you were, Maggie
When you and I were young.

George Johnson

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: autoharpbob
Date: 11 Apr 10 - 08:11 AM

"If it wasn't for the 'gators, I'd sleep out in the woods"

"T'would been better for us both had we never, in this wide and wicked world had never met
For the pleasures we've both seen together, I am sure love I'll never forget"

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 11 Apr 10 - 06:02 PM

I do so hate to be pedantic, but Commander Crabbe has got the punctuation badly wrong in his line from Raglan Road, notwithstanding the fact that most people mistakenly sing it the way he punctuated it.

It's not:

When the angel woos, the clay he'll lose, his wings at the dawn of day

It is:

When the angel woos the clay, he'll lose his wings at the dawn of day.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Bluegrassman
Date: 11 Apr 10 - 07:21 PM

The farmers dog can only bark
But the cold north wind can bite.
From a Butch Hancock song called "You've never seen me cry" and performed by the Flatlanders.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Commander Crabbe
Date: 11 Apr 10 - 08:14 PM

Murray

My most humble apologies!

However, you try singing the line with your punctuation to the the last bar of "The dawning of the day", the tune to which it is most frequently sung.

It was originally a poem and if I ever read it as such I promise I'll punctuate it as such. Until then, while I choose to sing it, I'll arrange it and perform it any way I want. Of the many times I have done so, no one has ever complained that I got the punctuation wrong in that line.

Quote "I do so hate to be pedantic" Hmmmmmmmmm! Maybe not I think.

Yours mistakenly

CC

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: GUEST,Continuity Jones
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 04:43 AM

Now it's been 25 years or more
I've roamed this land from shore to shore
From Tyne to Teign, or Severn to Thames
From moor to vale, from peak to fen

Played in cafes, pubs and bars
I've stood in the street with my own guitar
But I'd be richer than all the rest
If I had a pound for each request

For 'Duelling Banjos', 'American Pie'
It's enough to make you cry
'Rule Britannia', or 'Swing low...'
Are they the only songs we English know?

Seed, bark, flower, fruit
They're never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoot
They need roots

After the speeches, when the cake's been cut
The disco's over and the bar is shut
At christening, birthday, wedding or wake
What can we sing 'til the morning breaks

When the Indians, Asians, Afro-Celts
It's in their blood, below their belt
They're playing and dancing all night long
So what have they got right that we've got wrong?

Seed, bark, flower, fruit
They're never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoot
They need roots and

Haul away boys, let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We've lost more than we'll ever know
'Round the rocky shores of England
We need roots

And a minister said his vision of hell
Is three folk singers in a pub near Wales
Well, I've got a vision of urban sprawl
There's pubs where no-one ever sings at all

And everyone stares at a great big screen
Overpaid soccer stars, prancing teens
Australian soap, American rap
Estuary English, baseball caps

And we oughta be ashamed of all we walk
Of the way we look, at the way we talk
Without our stories or our songs

And the guy next door's a west indian fella
but we get on well chat about uri gellar
and next to him there's an African born
but he always helps me mow my lawn

How will we know where we come from?
If this Sat Nav gives up and dies
We've lost George Cole and the tv remote
behind the sofa that's where it lies

Seed, bark, flower, fruit
Never gonna grow without their roots
I'd go out now and tend that garden
if I could only find them blasted boots

Haul away boys, let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
Out in the hail and the fog and the sun as well
down past the piggery with it's awful smell
We need roots

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: meself
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 08:36 AM

"It was originally a poem and if I ever read it as such I promise I'll punctuate it as such. Until then, while I choose to sing it, I'll arrange it and perform it any way I want. Of the many times I have done so, no one has ever complained that I got the punctuation wrong in that line."

That's because almost no one knows or cares what this poem/song means, and they are quite content to enjoy it as a meaningless but tuneful jumble of words and images, or to impose on it whatever fanciful interpretation comes into their heads. See the pertinent threads for examples of same.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Stringsinger
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 02:26 PM

She's like a swallow that flies so high,
She's like a river that never runs dry,
She's like the sunshine on the lee shore,
I love my love and love is no more.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Tootler
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 04:54 PM

Commander Crabbe wrote:
It was originally a poem and if I ever read it as such I promise I'll punctuate it as such. Until then, while I choose to sing it, I'll arrange it and perform it any way I want. Of the many times I have done so, no one has ever complained that I got the punctuation wrong in that line.

All very well, but if you sing those last two lines the way you punctuated them, they completely lose their meaning. As they are effectively the "summing up" at the end, then the rest of the song loses its meaning.

Raglan Road is a superb song, but is not easy to sing because the phrasing of the words and the phrasing of the tune do not always match, so you need to think very carefully how you are going to phrase it so as to make the meaning clear to your listeners.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Commander Crabbe
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 06:28 PM

I do

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: GUEST,Bernie
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 06:51 PM

Ian Tyson again,from his latest,"Yellowhead to Yellowstone"...
...a song to his estranged[and only]daughter...one of the saddest and loveliest of all...

Poplar trees are turning,how long has it been now
since I heard a word from you
since you blessed me with a smile
how long has it been ..

Evertything is so still;I can hear a dog bark
though,like you,he's far away
though like you he's gone from me
how long has it been....

How our horses couldn't wait to run
school bus afternoons in early fall
the races that you always won
through the fields of our dreams...

Now i'm waiting out the flight delays
waiting for the storm to pass
waiting for the sky to clear;and I see your face
I don't think I know you,but I know I love you
... still ......

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Joe_F
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 06:54 PM

If I am forsaken, I'll not be forsworn,
And he's surely mistaken if he thinks that I'll mourn.
I'll get myself up in some right high degree
And pass as light by him as he can by me.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: CET
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 08:26 PM

Well, Cdr Crabbe, it seems to me that Murray has it right, and that your response is a bit petulant. If you sing the song the way you punctuated it, you are singing gibberish. Kavangh's work deserves the respect of getting the punctuation (and the meaning) right.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Richie
Date: 12 Apr 10 - 11:20 PM

One of my favorite stanzas, that I used in one of my songs:

A cowslip ain't no kind of slip,
To slip upon a cow.
That's whay a catfish never answers,
To a cat's meow.

Richie

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: PHJim
Date: 13 Apr 10 - 11:42 AM

Maybe I should call her up
And even if she laughs at me
At least I would get to hear her voice.

Fred Eaglesmith

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: GUEST,Wally Macnow
Date: 13 Apr 10 - 11:50 AM

Perhaps my favorite

"I asked her for water, she give me gasoline." - Tommy Johnson "Cool Drink of Water Blues"

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: GUEST,Wally Macnow
Date: 13 Apr 10 - 11:55 AM

Also

I gave her the ring. She gave me the finger.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: GUEST,Jeff Parton
Date: 13 Apr 10 - 12:12 PM

Re the Tom Paxton song about 9-11, it's

Firemen pounding up the stairs while we were running down

That "pounding" is such a powerful word, so evocative.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 13 Apr 10 - 12:44 PM

A few verse from various Child ballads

I dreamed a dream last night, he said.
Such dreams are never good.
I dreamed by bower was full of swine,
And my bride bed full of blood.

Is Lady Margaret in her bower?
Or is she in her hall?
Or is she in her cold, cold coffin,
with her face turned to the wall.

Aft hae I played at the cairds and dice,
With my ain dear rantin' laddie.
But now I maun sit in my father's hall,
And sing bah to my bastard baby.

Willie stands at his hall door
and strokes his milk white steed.
When the rings they burst from off his fingers,
And his nose began to bleed.

Then up and spake the weather man.
I fear we'll all be be drowned.
For last night I saw the new moon
with the old moon in her arm.

Wha will lace mah shoes sae sma'
And wha will glove mah hand.
And wha will bind mah middle,
With a new made linen band.

Dinna ye mind, Lord Gregory,
When we were at the wine,
We changed the rings on our fingers,
And I can show thee thine.

Up then crew the red, red cock,
And up then crew the grey.
The eldest to the youngest said,
"It's time we were away"

The day does dawn, the cock does crow,
The chunnering worm does chide.
If we be missed out of our place,
A sore pain we must bide.

Woe be, woe be, my love he cries,
Woe be to your family.
Oh Don't you see my own heart's blood
Come trickling down my knee.

There was a lord in Edinburgh,
And a false, false lord was he.
he came a courting a rich king's daughter.
And married thought she.

For love comes in at my bedside,
And love lies down beside me.
Love so oppressed my tender breast.
And love will waste my body.

The stalk is withered dry my love.
So shall our hearts decay.
So be content to prove my love.
Till God calls you away.

Marvellous stuff!

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: meself
Date: 13 Apr 10 - 01:05 PM

Where are the eyes that looked so mild,
When my poor heart you first beguiled?
Why did you skedaddle from me and the child?
Johnny, I hardly knew ye.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: GUEST,saulgoldie
Date: 13 Apr 10 - 02:28 PM

"And the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame,
And on each end of the rifle, we're the same."

Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon


"There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away
with a warm heart whose better days are o'er.
Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day,
   Oh hard times come again no more.

Hard Times Come Again No More by Stephen Foster


Saul

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: GUEST,JP
Date: 13 Apr 10 - 08:05 PM

Alistair Hulett, in my opinion one of our finest songwriters, sadly died a few months ago. A couple of samples:

And the old men lilt how the blood was spilt
On the banks of the river Boyne
Three hundred years of hate and fear
Clutched like a miser's coin

(Among Proddy Dogs and Papes)


The bailiff came wi' the writ and a'
And the gallant lads of the Forty Twa
They drove ye oot in the sleet and snaw
The Gaels of Caledonia
When yer house was burned and yer crops as well
Ye stood and wept in the blackened shell
And the winter moor was a living hell
For the Gaels of Caledonia

(Destitution Road, about the Highland Clearances)

Or if you want traditional, how's this for chilling:

They came to rob, they came to slay,
They made their sport, they went their way.

(Famous Flower of Serving Men)

or in a lighter vein

He gave her a wink and she rolled her eye
Says he to himself "I'll be there by and by."

(Lovely Joan)

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: CET
Date: 14 Apr 10 - 12:13 PM

As another example of a contemporary song that has the gift, consider this from "Broke Down" by Slaid Cleaves and Rod Picott:

"Sherry had a pawnshop band of gold
A sink full of dishes and a love grown cold
Along came a boy, pretty as the devil
She took his hand, the whole thing unravelled."

To me, that's no "well meaning effusion". It has the same clarity as this:

"Oh sall I kill her, nourice,
Or sall I lat her be?"
"Oh kill her, kill her, Lamkin'
For she ne'er was good to me."

Neither of those verses are sentimental, but the sentiment itself is inescapable.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Joe_F
Date: 14 Apr 10 - 06:28 PM

Look yonder, partner, see that eagle rise.
He was born on land, but he sure enjoys the skies.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Commander Crabbe
Date: 14 Apr 10 - 09:37 PM

CET

You Said

"Well, Cdr Crabbe, it seems to me that Murray has it right, and that your response is a bit petulant. If you sing the song the way you punctuated it, you are singing gibberish. Kavangh's work deserves the respect of getting the punctuation (and the meaning) right."

Well

I haven't denied that Murray has it right. The punctuation he put up is correct. It's just that the punctuation Kavanagh used for the poem is difficult for the tune "Dawning of the Day" which is most popularly used for singing it.

Murray also says "notwithstanding the fact that most people mistakenly sing it the way he (my goodself) punctuated it". This is presumably because that is the way it best fits with the tune.

As Tootler said it's not easy to sing because of the phrasing. So it needs to be chosen carefully to convey the meaning correctly, which as I said, I endeavour to do, so as to avoid it being the gibberish you say it becomes.

May I re-iterate that if I ever read it as a poem I will punctuate it the way Kavanagh wrote it. Also when I sing it I will do my best to convey the true meaning out of respect for his work.

To my knowledge I am not aware that either Murray (or your good self) have actually heard me sing it. So I fail to see how you could judge my performance of Raglan Road based on the placing of two commas. That said, if you have, then comment away. All constructive criticism is gratefully received.

If I actually charged money for my performances and you had witnessed them then I might accept the criticism as fair game.

It is also some kind of rare talent to be able to determine petulance from an inert line of text on a forum.

Like I said "while I choose to sing it, I'll arrange it and perform it any way I want" If you, Murray or in fact anyone witnesses my performance and doesn't like it, feel free to tell me in person straight away. I don't mind if you do.

However, as you feel qualified to make judgement about me based solely on a comment made on this forum. Then I'm sure you will not object if I point out that your spelling of Kavanagh is not quite right.

Please be assured that I personally don't care if this is down to lack of ability or that you forgot to review your message before posting it.

Yours, fairly objectively but not very petulantly or pedantically.

Commander Crabbe

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: GUEST,Phil B
Date: 15 Apr 10 - 07:11 AM

May he never prosper
And my he never thrive
At anything he takes to hand
As long as he's alive
May the very ground he walks upon
The grass refuse to grow
Since he has been the cause
Of my sorrow grief and woe.

or


May you never prosper
May you always fail
At anything you take to hand
I hope you ne're do well
May the very ground etc etc.

or


There are tinkers tailors and shoemakers
Lie snoring asleep
While we poor souls on the ocean wide
are ploughing through the deep
There's no-one to defend us love
Or keep us from the cold
On the ocean wide where we must bide
Like jolly sailors bold.

or

Now I work down at the carwash
Where all it ever does is rain.

or

Pick up my guitar and play
just like yesterday
Get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again.

and so on

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: TonyA
Date: 15 Apr 10 - 02:38 PM

Nearly all the hundreds of songs I sing regularly were chosen because the lyrics moved me greatly, but picking just a few that come to mind right now:

contemporary:

Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook, like a night from some old-fashioned book,
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child.
Now I'm a grown woman, but my thoughts are still wild.
I thought I'd see London, or maybe Paree,
but I'm starin' at cornfields, that are starin' at me.

In the little dark engine room,
where the chill seeps in your soul,
how we huddled round that little pot stove
that burned oily rags and coal.

The beaches they sell to build their hotels, my fathers and I once knew.
The birds all along, the sunlight at dawn; singing Waimanalo blues.

Getting home and taking off his shoes, he settles down with the evening news,
while the kids do their homework with the TV in one ear.
While Superman, for the thousandth time, sells talking dolls and conquers crime,
dutifully they learn the date of birth of Paul Revere.
In the paper there's a piece about the mayor's middle name,
and he gets it read in time to watch the All-Star Bingo game.

I don't know much about much, and what I don't know I don't say.
And when I have nothing to say, I'm quiet.

They were creatures in a manner quite reptilian, in their unique and stylish way.
And their numbers could be reckoned in the millions;
but there are zero of these heroes in the world today.
They had music, art and fashion, there was dinosauric passion,
and I think they'd be enraged and mortified
that when they're mentioned today, it's only to say:
Their brains were small and they died.

traditional:

Vain, vain are the vows we have plighted.
I would that we never had met.
Love's a flower that blooms to be blighted
and a star that arose but to set.

Oh what a silly girl am I, to hang myself for a butcher's boy.

But I knew that with all my weeping, all the tears that I might shed
could not bring life back to Arthur, lying there so cold and dead.
So I took his lifeless body, cast it o'er the river side;
and I leave this world to wonder what became of Arthur Clyde.

For I was nothing to him,
Though he was the world to me.

It was on an autumn evening, an old man bent with age
strolled up to the village express, just off of a dusty stage.
"Is this the express office? I've come to get my son.
They told me that his train was due this place at half-past one."
"You've made a great mistake, sir, I would like for you to know.
This is the express office, not the town depot."
"You do not understand me, lad," with quivering lips he said.
"He's not coming as a passenger, he's coming to me dead."

My lover was a soldier, too. He fought at God's command.
A sabre pierced his gallant heart. You might have been the man.
He reeled and fell but was not dead. A horseman spurred his steed
and trampled on his dying brain. You might have done the deed.

I'll be all smiles tonight, love. I'll be all smiles tonight.
Though my heart may break tomorrow, I'll be all smiles tonight.

C'est l'aviron qui nous mène, qui nous mène.
C'est l'aviron qui nous mène en haut!

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Amos
Date: 15 Apr 10 - 02:44 PM

"But them cowboys, they had never heard
Of such a thing as a bankruptcy law.
So we left that drover's bones to bleach
On the trail of the buffalo....".



A

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Tootler
Date: 15 Apr 10 - 02:57 PM

It is also some kind of rare talent to be able to determine petulance from an inert line of text on a forum.

It is possible through the way you phrase a comment to convey an impression of petulance. A line of text is not inert but is open to interpretation. The comment below came over as petulant to me. You may not have meant it so, but that's the impression it conveyed.

It was originally a poem and if I ever read it as such I promise I'll punctuate it as such. Until then, while I choose to sing it, I'll arrange it and perform it any way I want.

It's the last sentence that does it.

Going back on topic, I believe that Patrick Kavanagh did actually intend it as a song, though being a poet, he wrote it as a poet would rather than as a songwriter would.

Luke Kelly gives that impression here

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Commander Crabbe
Date: 15 Apr 10 - 11:22 PM

Hi Tootler

Ok, I will concede that although a line of text is technically inert, it is open to interpretation.

You have said "It's the last sentence that does it". If in fact it was the last sentence, I could agree that it could be assumed as petulance. However, in the original post it is not the last sentence and neither was it intended to be petulant.

In the open session I attend and occasionally MC, it is not unusual for people to sing or play some material that I also do. It is rare that it conforms to the arrangement that I use. However, I would not be so impolite as to tell them that their punctuation or phrasing was crap, even if it was.

As I see it, they are free as individuals to arrange and interpret a song any way they wish to do so. Even if I don't particularly like it.

If as you say, an inert line of text is open to interpretation then;

Murray said:

"I do so hate to be pedantic, but Commander Crabbe has got the punctuation badly wrong in his line from Raglan Road, notwithstanding the fact that most people mistakenly sing it the way he punctuated it."

1. Contrary to his statement, Murray, I believe, quite likes to be pedantic.
2. If I had written this, I wouldn't comment on another's punctuation or phrasing.

CET said:

Well, Cdr Crabbe, it seems to me that Murray has it right, and that your response is a bit petulant. If you sing the song the way you punctuated it, you are singing gibberish. Kavangh's work deserves the respect of getting the punctuation (and the meaning) right.

1. Again, if I had written this, I wouldn't comment on another's punctuation or phrasing.

May all your lottery wins be more than a tenner.

CC

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 12:38 AM

Commander ~~ as I am the OP of a currently ongoing thread on the topic of winning only £10 in the lottery when the jackpot was £17,000,000, I cannot help but feel that perhaps, in the words of Air XXX in The Beggar's Opera, "that was levelled at me".

May I respectfully ask why? Or am I mistaken & this is mere coincidence?

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Commander Crabbe
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 05:19 AM

Michael

I am not aware of your ongoing thread and it was not levelled at you.

CC

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 05:35 AM

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky

This is gorgeous.

I think that all depends what you are smoking:-) One more draw and I would put up "Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind."

(Only joshing - honest. I openly admitted liking the Moody Blues the other day!)

DeG

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 05:44 AM

Thanx, Commander. But if you have a look at my thread, which is BS, you will see your comment was so peculiarly à-propos as to be positively spooky!

~M~

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: mkebenn
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 03:47 PM

Poets tell how Pancho fell
Lefty's livin' in a cheap hotel
the desert's quiet and Cleveland's cold
and so this story end's, I'm told.


Townes, of course. Not too bad for a verse he added because someone told him the song wasn't long enough...Mike

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Tootler
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 03:55 PM

By Woody Guthrie

A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says "They are just deportees."

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except deportees?

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: mkebenn
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 05:22 PM

Whiskey is my deathbed
tells me where to lay my head
"not with me" is all she said
Early in the morning


Townes, again Mike

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: GUEST,Seonaid
Date: 16 Apr 10 - 06:40 PM

Here's one that makes me laugh (cynically) -- it's about horses and young maids, but the political implications are so-o-o timely:

"Keep 'em so busy up in front, they can't look out behind."

(From "The Bachelor Boy")

Now, here's one that makes me cry -- selections from Child #91:

O we were sisters seven, Maisry,
And five are dead wi child; …

'O hold your tongue, my ae daughter,
Let a your folly be,
For ye shall be married ere this day week
Tho the same death you should die.'

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: PHJim
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 12:38 PM

Some blues lyrics that I've always liked:

It's Honey and it's Sweety when I'm with her,
Big nasty man when I'm gone
When she sees me coming with a twenty dollar bill
It's,"Sweet Darlin' where you been so long?"

I ain't never had no two women at one time
No I ain't never had no two women at one time
To satisfy this boy takes six, seven, eight or nine.

I prayed to the Lord to send me an angel down
Yes I prayed to the Lord to send me an angel down
He must've been out of angels 'cause he sent me old Thelma Brown.

What is it makes me love that Thelma Brown?
Ah what is it makes me love that Thelma Brown?
Must be the same old thing makes a bulldog hug a hound.

What makes my Grandma love my Grandpa so?
What makes my Grandma love my Grandpa so?
He's got that same jelly roll he had fifty years ago.

Although some of them may be politically incorrect, I like 'em.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: PHJim
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 12:40 PM

Don't you leave me here,
Don't you leave me here,
But if you must go and leave me Darlin'
Leave a dime for beer.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: PHJim
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 12:49 PM

Old Timer, Old Timer,
I'm too late to die young now.
Old Timer, five and dimer,
Tryin' to find a way to age like wine somehow.

My new stuff is nothin' like my old stuff was
And neither one is much when compared to the show
Which may not be as good as another one you saw
So help me I know, I know, I know.

I'm an Old Timer, Old Timer,
Too late to die young now.
Old Timer, five and dimer,
Tryin' to find a way to age like wine somehow.

I've known every fool who's ever signed his picture on the wall
At the back of all these beer joints and concert halls,
Been through sven managers, five labels,
A thousand picks and patch cables,
Three bands, a bunch of guitar stands
And cans and cans and cans of beer
And bottles of beer and bags of pot
And a bunch of stuff that I forgot
I thought that I'd be dead by now.
But I'm not.

Todd Snider - Aged Like Wine

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: PHJim
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 12:52 PM

"Three bands, a bunch of guitar stands
And cans and cans and cans of beer
And bottles of beer and bags of pot"

should be

"Three bands, a bunch of guitar stands
And cans and cans and cans of beer
And bottles of booze and bags of pot"

"sven managers" should be "seven managers"

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Joe_F
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 06:25 PM

Single girl, single girl,
Goes to the store and buys.
Married girl, married girl,
Rocks the cradle and cries.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 17 Apr 10 - 09:17 PM

Great thread.

Lulu, oh lulu,come and open up this door.
Before I have to open it with my old 44.
(Trad - Hang me/Been all around this world)

I have secrets I could tell you
You have secrets of your own
All these years we've lived together
You and I have lived alone
(Utah Philips - Golden Mansions)

Some will rob you with a six gun
some with a fountain pen
(Wood Guthrie - Pretty Boy Floyd)

Russ (permanent GUEST)

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: GUEST,Vicki Kelsey
Date: 18 Apr 10 - 09:15 PM

There are many that do it for me, but two that come to mind are Michael Smith's "The Dutchman", a heart-filling description of a love that endures through the trials that life can dish out, and Eric Bogle's "No Man's Land", aka "Willie McBride" and "Green Fields of France", which I am unable to sing or even hear without blubbering halfway through.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Bert
Date: 18 Apr 10 - 09:22 PM

Haul him aboard with a running bowline.

Oh 'tiz my delight on a shiny night, in the season of the year.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: ichMael
Date: 18 Apr 10 - 11:02 PM

Believe me if all those
Endearing young charms
Which I gaze on so fondly today
Were to change by tomorrow
And fleet in my arms,
Like fairy gifts fading away
Though would'st still be adored
As this moment thou art
Let thy loveliness fade as it will
And around the dear ruin
Each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself
Verdantly still.

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 11:30 AM

"Blaspheming saints & splendid drunken heroes" John Connelly's epic description of trawler deckhands [from his Trawler town Requium.]

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: GUEST,Peter G
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 05:47 AM

The kirk was decked at eventide, the tapers glimmer'd fair.
The Priest and Bride-groom wait the Bride, and Dame and Knight were there.
They sought her baith in bower and ha', the Ladye wasn'a seen----
"FOR SHE'S OWER THE BORDER AN' AWA' - WI' JOCK O' HAZELDENE"!

Subject: RE: Great folk song lyrics
From: GUEST,Guest -Jon
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 07:04 AM

From 'Seasons' or 'The Ploughshare'

The sun has gone down and the sky it looks red,
down on my soft pillow where I lay my head,
when I open my eyes for to see the stars shine,
then the thoughts of my true love run into my mind.

...but them I'm biased!