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Well, how do you do, Private William McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And I'll rest for a while in the warm summer sun.
I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the glorious fallen in nineteen-fifteen.
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean.
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
Did they beat the drum slowly; did they sound the fifes lowly;
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing 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?
And, though you died back in nineteen-fifteen,
In some faithful heart are you always nineteen?
Or are you just a stranger without even a name,
Enshrined forever behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
Did they beat the drum slowly; did they sound the fifes lowly;
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing The Last Post And Chorus;
Did the pipes play The Flowers Of The Forest?
The sun shining down on these green fields of France.
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished now, under the plow.
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it's still no man's land.
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man,
To a whole generation who were butchered and damned.
Did they beat the drum slowly; did they sound the fifes lowly;
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing The Last Post And Chorus;
Did the pipes play The Flowers Of The Forest?
And I can't help but wonder now, William McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause?
Did you really believe that this war would end war?
Well, the suffering and the sorrow, the glory and the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For, Willie McBride, it's all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.
Did they beat the drum slowly; did they sound the fifes lowly;
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing The Last Post And Chorus;
Did the pipes play The Flowers Of The Forest?
Eric Bogle's original song was titled Green Fields Of France.
This variant and the YouTube video above was arranged and recorded as Willie McBride by Ryan's Fancy (Dance Around This One ©1981, Boot Records).
See more songs by Ryan's Fancy.
(The Last Post And Chorus)
