Well how do you do young Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside,
And rest for a while neath the warm summer sun,
I've been working all day and I'm nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only 19,
When you joined the great fallen in 1916,
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean,
Or young Willie McBride was it slow and obscene?

Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly,
Did they sound the dead march, as they lowered you down,
Did the band play the last post and chorus,
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest.

Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind,
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined,
Although you died back in nineteen sixteen
In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Enclosed in forever behind a glass frame,
In an old photograph all torn, tattered, and stained,
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.  

The sun now it shines on the green fields of France,
There's a warm summer breeze that makes the red poppies dance,
And look how the sun shines from under the trees,
There's no gas, no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it's still "No Man's Land",
The countless white crosses a mute witness stand,
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man,
To a whole generation that were butchered and damned.  

Now young Willie McBride I can't help wonder why,
Do all those who lie here know why did they die,
And did they really believe when they answered the call,
Did they really believe that this war would end wars.
Well, the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain,
The killing and dieing were all done in vain,
For young Willie McBride it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Willie McBride.mp3 by The Clancy Brothers (2.5 MB).

Editorial:  This would be a truly great song if it weren't for the last part about having died in vain.  In some sense, that might be true.  But in a greater sense, there is no way that while we are on this earth we can entirely banish the darkness.  The darkness will always return.  The best anyone can hope to do is to hold it off a little longer.

To preserve bandwidth this file will be removed at the end of the month.

Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.

--Siegfried Sassoon