Robert W. Service
David Perry
Ian Robb: “My late Friends of Fiddler’s Green bandmate David Parry was a big fan of Scots-Canadian ballad poet Robert W. Service, and he set a fair number of Service’s poems to music, releasing them on a wonderful CD entitled “The Man from Eldorado.” This is one of those, and describes the excruciating dilemma faced by a poor family man who is shamed into volunteering to fight in WW1, a war he doesn’t believe in.”
Ian Robb: https://ianrobb1.bandcamp.com/track/the-volunteer
https://ianrobb1.bandcamp.com/track/the-volunteer
Sez I: My Country calls? Well, let it call! I grins perlitely and declines wiv thanks. Go let ’em plaster every blighted wall; ‘Ere’s one they won’t stampede into the ranks. Them politicians with their greasy ways, Them empire-grabbers, fight for them? No fear! I’ve seen this mess a-coming from the days Of Algyserious and Aggydear. I’ve felt my passion rise and swell, But…wot the ‘ell, Bill? Wot the hell? Sez I: My Country? Mine? I likes their cheek Me mud-bespattered by the cars they drive, Wot makes me measly thirty bob a week And sweats red blood to keep meself alive! Fight for the right to slave that they might spend? Them in their mansions, me ‘ere in me slum? No, let ’em fight wot’s something to defend: But me, I’ve nothing-let the Kaiser come. And so I cusses hard and well, But…wot the ‘ell, Bill? Wot the hell? Sez I: If they would do the decent thing, And shield the missus and the little uns, Why even I might shout “God save the King” And take me chances wiv them ‘ungry guns. But we’ve got three, another on the way; It’s that what makes me scowl and set me jaw The wife and nippers, wot of them, I say, If I get’s knocked out in this blasted war? Get’s proper busted by a shell, But…wot the ‘ell, Bill? Wot the hell? Ah, wot the ‘ell’s the use of all this talk? Today some boys in blue was passin’ me, And some of them they ‘ad no legs to walk, And some of them they ‘ad no eyes to see. And-well, I couldn’t look ’em in the face, And so I’m goin’, goin’ to declare I’m under forty-one, and take me place To face the music with the lads out there. A fool you say? Well, perhaps you’re right. I’ll get no peace until I fight. I’ve ceased to think; I only know I’ve gotta go, Bill, gotta go.