Well how do you do, young Willie McBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for a while ´neath the warm summer sun
I've been working all day and I'm nearly done
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great forces of nineteen-sixteen
Well I hope you died well, and I hope you died clean
Or young Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene

Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus
Did the pipes play the 'Flowers of the Forest'

And did you leave a young wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined
And although you died back in nineteen sixteen
In that loyal heart are you forever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Forever enshrined behind the glass frame
In a old photograph, torn and tattered and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame

Oh, did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down
Did the band play The Last Post in chorus
Did the pipes play the 'Flowers of the Forest'

Yeah!

Now the sun's shinin' down on the green fields of France
The warm winds blow gently; the red poppies dance
And the trenches, they have vanished long under the plow
There's no gas, no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard it's still no-man's-land
The countless white crosses in the mute witness stand
To a man's blind indifference to his fellow man
And a whole generation that were butchered and damned

Oh, did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death-march as they lowered you down
Oh, and did the band play The Last Post in chorus
Did the pipes play the ´Flowers of the Forest.´

Whoa
Young Willie McBride
Can you hear me
Cause I'm prayin'
By your side, yeah
Yeah