This Lyric is: #164

Key Am. Folk

Eighteen and a Day

Chorus:
Well I'm off now Ma, give us a smile,
I'll write in a week, I'll be home in awhile,
Give us a kiss and wish me goodbye,
Don't worry Mother I'm too young to die.

Those were the last words that I heard him say,
Gone from me at Eighteen and a Day.

His Father was fifty when he took me for wife,
I was nearly forty when I gave my son life,
I thought an old spinster is what I would be,
And I cried with joy at fates kindness to me.

Ah what a wee terror, a typical lad,
Dirty and threadbare and proud of his Dad,
Fishing on Sundays, down by the canal,
An old soldier and a young boy, a couple of pals.

Chorus:

Dad told the boy stories of comrades and war,
Nights in the desert, the Africa Corps,
How they turned the fox and pushed from the sea,
Gave a leg for a medal on the sands of Tripoli.

He went to the army, although I weren't willing,
But the old man was proud when he took the queens shilling,
And well I remember the tear in Dad's eye,
As the band and the colours and his son marched on by.

Chorus:

On his eighteenth birthday he was sent to be seen,
On the streets of the North amidst orange and green,
He was there but a day, when a bomb blew apart,
A young man's body, and an old womans heart.

(Optional)
In a strange kind of way, I'm feeling the sorrow,
Of yesterdays mothers, and those of tomorrow,
For the millions of sons, who've marched out to die,
Nothings been changed, and mothers still cry...

Chorus:

@Graham Johnson 1990. All rights reserved.



[This message has been edited by blakeh (edited 09-01-2002).]