Stan Rogers 1975
“In 1974 and 1975 I made several visits to Bill and Bev Howell in Halifax. One weekend they left me alone in their house with a stack of Bill’s excellent poetry for inspiration, and I wrote 5 songs. This was one of them and I believe the first song for the inshore fishermen that I ever wrote, though hardly the last.”
Stan Rogers: Make And Break Harbour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdV0P8Zz3f4
How still lies the bay, in the light western airs Which blow from the crimson horizon Once more we tack home, with a dry empty hold Saving gas with the breezes so fair She’s a kindly cape islander, old but still sound But so lost in the long liner’s shadow Make and Break and make do, but the fish are so few That she won’t be replaced should she founder Now its so hard to not think of before the big war When the cod went so cheap, but so plenty Foreign trawlers go by now with long seeking eyes Taking all where we seldom take any And the young folk don’t stay with the fisherman’s ways Long ago they all moved to the cities And the ones left behind old and tired and blind Won’t work for a pound, for a penny Chorus: In Make and Break Harbour the boats are so few Too many are pulled up and rotten Most houses stand empty, old nets hung to dry Are blown away lost and forgotten Now I can see the big draggers have stirred up the bay Leaving lobster traps smashed on the bottom Can they think it don’t pay to respect the old ways That make and break men have not forgotten For we still keep our time to the turn of the tide In this boat that I built with my father Still lifts to the sky, the “one lunger” and I Still talk like old friends on the water