Not dead, only gigging

I have just posted a brief appreciation of the Scots/Australian folk singer Eric Bogle over on Barstool Blues, including the lyrics of his somewhat scathing comic song 'Plastic Paddy' (very topical!).

I saw him play at the Anzac Club in Toronto back in the early summer of 1998, where he told a rather nice story about the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Apparently Blair (or, more probably, one of his speechwriters) had recently chosen to profess that his favourite 'war poem' was Bogle's 'The Green Fields of France'.... but had suggested that it was written by a soldier who had died in the First World War (a particularly lazy assumption, given that this does not really fit with the perspective of the piece at all). One of Bogle's formidable, elderly Scottish aunties had been incensed by this, and had had a letter published in one of the national newspapers to correct the error. She wrote: "I can assure the Prime Minister that my nephew is still very much alive and well. And to prove it, here are the dates for his upcoming tour:..." Classic.

Here is the 'poem' in question.

[And no, I don't really think this is all that good on the page; I'm not at all sure that it counts as a poem at all, really. And, as I mentioned in the post over on Barstool Blues, 'folk singers' aren't my thing at all, in general. However, I was very pleasantly surprised by seeing Bogle perform live: he's one of those people with whom the conviction of the delivery entirely overcomes the obviousness of the sentiment, the triteness of the expression.

And by the by, a little trivia note: one of the many, many people to have covered this song is another of my comedy folkster heroes, Attila the Stockbroker - once mentioned from the Barstool here.]

The Green Fields of France

Well, how do you do, Private William McBride?
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside
And rest for awhile 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 19
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916.
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean.
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Chorus:
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did bugles sound 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play the 'Flowers of the Forest'?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you always 19?

Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plough;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.

But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land,
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can't help but wonder, now, Willie 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 all the wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain.
For, Willie McBride, it all happened again.
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Eric Bogle