Key: G
Introduction:
G Em C Am
Well how do you do, young Willie McBride.
D G D
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
G Em C Am
I'll rest for awhile in the warm summer sun.
D C G
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
G Em C Am
And I see by your gravestone, you were only nineteen
D G D
When you joined the dead heroes in 1915.
G Em C Am
Well, I hope you died quick, and I hope you died clean.
D C G
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
D C G
Did they beat the drum slowly did they sound the fifes lowly
D C G
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
C G
Did the bugle play The Last Post and Chorus
C Am D C G
Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest?
G Em C D
And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
D C G
In some faithful heart are you forever enshrined?
G Em C D
And, though you died back in 1915,
D C G
In some faithful heart are you forever 19?
G Em C Am
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
D C D
Enshrined forever behind a glass frame,
G Em C Am
In an old photograph, torn & tattered & stained,
D C G
And fading to yellow in a bound leather frame?
Chorus
G Em C Am
Well, the sun, it shines down on these green field of France.
D C G
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
G Em C G
The trenches have vanished now, under the plow.
D C G
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns fire now.
G Em C Am
But here in this graveyard it's still no man's land.
D C D
And the countless white crosses in mute witness stand
G Em C Am
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
D C G
A whole generation were butchered & damned.
Chorus
G Em C Am
Well, I can't help but wonder now, Willie McBride,
D C
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
G Em C G
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause?
D C G
Did you really believe this war would end all wars?
G Em C Am
Well, the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
D C
The killling, the dying, it was all done in vain.
G Em C Am
For William McBride, it's all happened again,
D C G
And again, and again, and again, and again.
Chorus