G Em C Am

Well, how do you do, young Willie McBride

D D7 C G

Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside,

G Em C Am

And rest for a while heath the warm summer sun,

D D7 C G

I've been working all day and I'm nearly done.

G Em C Am

I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen,

When you joined the great fallen in nineteen sixteen,

G Em C Am

I hope you died well and I hope you died clean,

D D7 C G

Or young Willie McBride was it slow and obscene.

CHORUS:

D D7 C G

Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the life lowly.

D D7 C D

Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down,

D C G Em

And did the band play the Last Post and chorus,

G D7 G

Did the pipes play the Flours of the Fo - rest.

G Em C Am

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind,

D D7 C G

In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined.

G Em C Am

Although you died back in nineteen sixteen,

D D7 C G

In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen.

G Em C Am

Or are you a stranger without even a name,

D C G D7

Enclosed and forever behind the glass pane,

D7 G Em Am

In an old photograph, torn and battered and stained

D D7 C G

And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.

G Em C Am

The sun now it shines on the green fields of France

D D7 C G

There's a warm summer breeze, it makes the red poppies dance.

G Em C Am

And look how the sun shines from under the clouds

D D7 C G

There's no gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now.

G Em C Am

But here in this graveyard it's still no-man's-land.

D C G D7

The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand,

G Em Am

To man's blind indifference to his fellow man,

D D7 C G

To a whole generation that were butchered and damned.

G Em C Am

Now young Willie McBride I can't help but wonder why

D D7 C G

Do all those who lie here know why they died.

G Em C Am

And did they believe when they answered the cause

D D7 C G

Did they really believe that this war would end wars.

G Em C Am

Well the sorrows, the suffering, the glory, the pain

D C G D7

The killing and dying was all done in vain.

D7 G Em Am

For young Willie McBride it all happened again,

D D7 C G

And again, and again, and again, and again.