Category: songs

Benedict Gagliardi 2016

melody 'Awake, Arise Good Christians' trad. Sheffield carol

The Vox Hunters: https://thevoxhunters.bandcamp.com/track/one-species-are-we

Of three domains of all life, eukaryotes are we
Inside each cell within us, a nucleus there be
Bacteria, Archaea, unfortunate are they
They have no membrane bound around their strands of DNA

Chorus:
Linnaeus! Linnaeus! Here’s to your hierarchy
And let it not betray us! One species are we!

Come all you motile metazoans and listen to my song
The kingdom Animalia is where we all belong
The plants may have their chlorophyll to photosynthesize
But animals are heterotrophs and so are the Fungi

Our backbone gives us structure, our backbone gives us strength
So with the other chordates, we find our phylum rank
But let our boney ego never be unfurled
For the spineless worms and insects, they truly rule the world

By the milk our mothers gave us, by the hair upon our skin
It’s clear that we are mammals, class Mammalia we’re in
Most have a placenta, but this class has strange extremes
Like the milky-pouched marsupials and egg-laying monotremes

So let’s put things in order, now that we’ve been to class
With monkeys, apes, prosimians, we, the primates, do amass
We all can be distinguished by our well-filled craniums
And the envy of all other life: two fine opposable thumbs

Welcome to our family, all Great Apes are we
Orangutan, gorilla and our cousin chimpanzee
But if you believe bonobos just evolved into man
It seems you treat your own brain just like a garbage can

Homo is the genus of the African bipeds
Who stood erect, and picked up tools, and learned to use their heads
Our cousins are extinct now, leaving only us
But thanks to our bad habits, we may join them soon enough

So we are Homo sapiens but let us not forget
The reason we were given our specific epithet
We earned it for our wisdom, we earned it for our brain
Let fear and hatred never trump our consciousness again

Horatius Bonar 1860 & Ira Sankey 1891

Bonar was a Scottish pastor in Leith, and wrote many hymns. He wrote the poem that became this song as the ten-stanza "Everlasting Memorial". Sankey was an American hymn singer who worked with preacher Dwight Moody, and adapted three of Bonar's stanzas to music after meeting Bonar on a tour. John Tams wrote 3 new verses for multiple plays. Will Quale writes "Though the source of the song was Bonar and Sankey, without Tams's secular adaptations (and Coope, Boyes & Simpson's performances and recordings of Tams's adaptations), it would likely never have become the popular folk anthem it is today." Tams wrote "I trawled obsessively, the Moody and Sankey hymnbook seeking songs and anthems that might otherwise be overlooked. Right or wrong I edited out many of the "Godly" references and made new verses... I wasn't trying to de-Christianise them, just to reappraise them, put them back to be sung out loud by anyone who took something from them, Christians and Non-Christians alike." Verses 1,3, and 5 below are Sankey's; 4, 6, and 7 are Tams' (added in 2007, 2017, and 1990 respectively). Verse 2 is adapted by Alex Ellis from the only one of Bonar's stanzas not adapted by Sankey whose poetry rises above sepulchral tedium.

Fading away like the stars of the morning
Losing their light in the glorious sun
Thus would we pass from the earth and its toiling
Only remembered for what we have done.

Chorus:
Only remembered, only remembered
Only remembered by what we have done.
(last two lines of previous verse)

Yes, like the fragrance that wanders in freshness,
When the scent’s flowers are closed up and gone,
So would I be to this world’s weary dwellers,
Only remembered for what I have done.

Shall we be missed though by others succeeded
Reaping the fields we in springtime have sown?
No, for the sowers may pass from their labors
Only remembered for what they have done

Horses and men, plowshares and traces
The line on the land and the paths of the sun
Season by season we mark nature’s graces
Only remembered for what we have done.

Only the truth that in life we have spoken,
Only the seed that in life we have sown
These shall pass onwards when we are forgotten:
Only remembered for what we have done.

Where are they running? Why are they falling?
Fewer still fewer than what was begun
Ghosts in the morning mist voicelessly calling
Only remembered for what we have done. 

Who’ll sing the anthems and who’ll tell the story
Will the line hold? Will it scatter and run?
Shall we at last be united in glory?
Only remembered for what we have done

Alan Doyle & Séan McCann 1997

I’ve got a smile on my face, and I’ve got four walls around me
I’ve got the sun in the sky, all the water surround me, oh you know
Yeah, I’ll win now but sometimes I’ll lose
I’ve been battered, but I never bruise
It’s not so bad

Chorus:
And I say way-hey-hey, it’s just an ordinary day
And it’s all your state of mind
At the end of the day, you’ve just got to say It’s all right

Janie sings on the corner, what keeps her from dying?
Let them say what they want, she won’t stop trying, oh you know
She might stumble, if they push her ’round
She might fall, but she’ll never lie down
It’s not so bad

In this beautiful life, there’s always some sorrow
And it’s a double-edged knife, but there’s always tomorrow, oh you know
It’s up to you now if you sink or swim
Just keep the faith and your ship will come in
It’s not so bad 

trad 

West was apparently a real boarding-house keeper in Liverpool who would "train" inexperienced farmers and mill-hands to be sailors pretty much as described in the song. Bert Lloyd wrote in 1957 that West was active in the "latter days of sail" and one source says 1870s.

Gallimaufry

As I went walkin’ down London Road, I come to Paddy West’s house,
He gave me a meal of American hash and he said it was Liverpool scouse,
He said, “There’s a ship, she’s wantin’ hands, and on her you must sign,
Oh, the mate’s a bastard, the bosun’s worse, but I think she’ll suit you fine.”

Chorus:
So take off your dungaree jacket, and give yourselves a rest,
And we’ll think on them cold nor’westers that we had at Paddy West’s.

And it’s when the meal was over, boys, the wind began to blow.
Paddy sends me to the attic, the main-royal for to stow,
But when I got to the attic, why, no main-royal could I find,
So I turned myself ’round to the window, boys, and I furled the window blind.

Now Paddy he calls all hands on deck, their stations for to man.
And his wife she stood in the doorway with a bucket in her hand;
Paddy sings out, “Now let ‘er rip!” and she flings the water our way,
Sayin’, “Clew in the fore t’gan’sl, boys, she’s takin’ in the spray!”

Now that seein’ we’re bound for the south’ard, boys, to Frisco we was bound;
Paddy he calls for a length of rope, and he lays it on the ground,
We all stepped over, and back again, and he says to me, “That’s fine,
Now if ever they ask were you ever at sea you can say you crossed the line.”

And there’s one more thing that you must do before you sail away,
Just step around the table, boys, where the bullock’s horn do lay.
And if ever they ask, “Was you ever at sea?”
you can say, “Ten times ’round the Horn.”

trad

Chorus:
Unite and unite and let us all unite,
For summer is a-come unto day,
And whither we are going we will all unite,
In the merry morning of May.

Hark here you young men everyone (For summer is a-come unto day,)
Now go to the green-wood and fetch your May home (In the merry morning of May.)

Arise up Mr. Singh and gold be your ring,
And give to us a cup of ale the merrier we shall sing,

Arise up Ms. Jean all in your gown of green
You are as fine a lady as wait upon the Queen,

Where are the young men that here now should dance,
Some they are in England and some they are in France

Where are the others that here now should sing
They are in the meadows the flowers gathering,

Bridge:
O! where is St. George,
O, where is he O?
He is out in his long-boat all on the salt sea O.
Up flies the kite and down falls the lark O,
Aunt Ursula Birdhood she had an old ewe
And she died in her own park O.

With the merry ring, adieu the merry spring,
How happy is the little bird that merrily doth sing

The young men of Padstow might if they would,
They might have built a ship and gilded her with gold

The young women of Padstow might if they would,
They might have made a garland with the white rose and the red,

Now fare you well and bid you all good cheer,
We call no more unto your house before another year

Lotus Dickey 

Becky & Nicole: https://beckyandnicole.bandcamp.com/track/pair-in-a-paradise

Heaven and Earth by the Lord were created,
Sun and the moon and the stars so elated,
Two in a garden, a beautifully mated
Pair in a Paradise, bare there were they.

Chorus:
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, (x3)
Pair in a Paradise, bare there were they.

Fruit-bearing trees in that garden were planted,
Nothing was lacking, no nothing was scanted;
Perfect for two, a completely enchanted
Pair in a paradise, bare there were they.

Of all the fruit growing there they’d partaken
Saving for one that the Lord had forbade them
Lest they be a-dying, that man and maiden,
Pair in a paradise, bare there were they.

Then in the garden there spoke an advisor:
“Why doth thou listen to all of these lies for?
Eat,” said the serpent, “to be but the wiser.”
Pair in a paradise, bare there were they.

Satan the serpent was oh so deceiving.
Eve though his cunning was led to believing;
Ate, as did Adam, soon to be a-grieving,
Pair in a paradise, bare there were they.

Hiding in shame at a growing awareness
There of their nakedness, there of their bareness,
Clothed by the Lord, then, a sadly embarrassed
Pair in a paradise, bare there were they.

Satan in Eden then had his beginning,
Sought with the lie o’er the Lord to be winning,
Death brought instead to the world through a sinning
Pair in a paradise, bare there were they. 

Leon Rosselson 1966

Written following the Aberfan disaster of 1966 outside Cardiff where a coal mine waste tip collapsed and avalanched slurry into town, killing 109 children at Pantglas Junior School and 35 others. Rosselson wrote "I like playing fantasy games inventing the newspaper headlines I'd most like to see. 'Lord Robens Buried by Slag Heap' would be rather pleasing." Robens was chairman of the National Coal Board in 1966 and showed a degree of indifference to the disaster. He proceeded to tell lies about it to the press before raiding the public disaster funds to cover the Coal Board's own clean-up costs.

Martin Simpson & the Wilson Family: https://towerseyfestival.bandcamp.com/track/palaces-of-gold

If the sons of company directors
And judges’ private daughters
Had to go to school in a slum school
Dumped by some joker in a damp back alley
Had to herd into classrooms cramped with worry
With a view onto slag heaps and stagnant pools
Had to file through corridors greyed with age
And play in a crackpot concrete cage

Chorus:
Buttons would be pressed
Rules would be broken
Strings would be pulled
And magic words spoken
Invisible fingers would mould
Palaces of gold

If prime ministers and advertising executives
Royal personages and bank managers’ wives
Had to live out their lives in dank rooms
Blinded by smoke and the foul air of sewers
Rot on the walls and rats in the cellars
In rows of dumb houses like mouldering tombs
Had to bring up their children and watch them grow
In a wasteland of dead streets where nothing will grow

I’m not suggesting any sort of a plot
Everyone knows there’s not
But you unborn millions might like to be warned
That if you don’t want to be buried alive by slag heaps
Pitfalls and damp walls and rat traps and dead streets
Arrange to be democratically born
The son of a company director
Or a judge’s fine and private daughter 

Jim Page 2003

Christy Moore changed a lot of the lyrics with Page's blessing for his 2024 recording; this is Moore's version with a chorus Page recorded in 2024 that differs from his original 2003 chorus.

Let me tell you a story, I’ll be quick as I can
Terrible news from the Holy Land
Pictures of Children etched in my mind
Buried in the rubble on the firing line
The Jews and The Arabs lived one and the same
A thousand years then the Zionists came
Came like a river, came like a flood
Al Nakba was written on the wall in blood

Chorus:
O Palestine, going home sometime

Talk about settlers from far away
Talk about dollars from the USA
Talk about blast bombs, the bullets and the lead
The shadow of the Jackboot hanging over your head
What can you do when they demolish your home
Olive Trees buried and gone
Do you dare to resist?
Stand on the road with a rock in your fist

They talk about peace like it’s a moral obligation
There’ll never be peace under occupation
Talk about Talks, to the beat of the drum
70 years Nakba rolls on
We need to talk about the friends that we endorse
The rockets and the tanks and the warships they disperse
No wonder it seems to be
An undemocratic version of Democracy

trad 

Recorded by the Wilson Family in 1991 as "Beggar's Carol".

May good luck attend this house and happiness and laughter
Love to master and to maid, and all that follow after.

Chorus:
Let every pan that you have got, Be full of pancakes piping hot,
Pancakes hot! Pancakes hot! Pancakes hot!
We like pancakes from the pot!

Mistress give to us we beg, of all the cakes you cannot eat
We will lick your dishes clean, for cakes to us are more than meat.

We will play upon the drum, a merry tune we heard in France
If you will but give us cakes, to warm our legs so we may dance. 

Hedy West 1976

To the tune of "Palms of Victory"

Magpie Arc: https://themagpiearc.bandcamp.com/track/pans-of-biscuits

I saw an honest farmer His back was bending low
Working in those cotton fields as hard as he could go
He piled it in the railpen Until the merchant came
That he might attach his cotton That he should pay his claim

Chorus (x2):
It’s pans of biscuits, Bowls of gravy, Pans of biscuits We shall have

I saw him in the evening His back was against the tree
His poor old head was aching He lowered down on his knee
“I’ll be compelled to leave here Or surely I will die!
My head’s commenced aching” I heard the farmer cry

“I’ve toiled all my lifetime And still I find I’m poor
Without an education My children’s left my door”
I saw an honest farmer His back was bending low
Working in those cotton fields as hard as he could go