Christy Moore – The Old Mans Song (Guitar)

Capo 1
Key
-

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Chords

[Verse 1]
        D               C        A             D
At the turning of the century I was a lad of five

    D                                  C               A
My father went to fight the Boers, he never came back alive

    D                             C              G
My mother had to bring us up no charity did she seek

      D                       C                A              D
She rubbed and scrubbed and scraped along on seven-and-six a week
[Verse 2]
        D               C                  A             D
At the age of twelve I left my school and went to get a job

       D                                  C               A
With growing kids my ma could do with the extra couple of bob

    D                                     C              G
I knew that longer schooling would have stood me better stead

          D             C                      A                 D
But you can’t afford refinement when you’re struggling for your bread
[Verse 3]
  D                   C        A           D
When the Great War started I did not hesitate

    D                          C             A
I took the royal shilling and went to do my bit

    D                                       C              G
We fought in blood and sweat and mud three years or thereabouts

         D                C                  A        D
Till I copped some gas in Flanders and was invalided out
[Verse 4]
 D               C              A                D
When the war was over and we’d settled with the Hun

    D                            C                   A
We went back to our civvies we thought the fighting done

    D                                C              G
We thoguht we'd earned our wages but we were out of luck

      D           C                    A              D
Soon we found we had to fight for the right to go to work
[Verse 5]
    D      C               A                 D
In ’26 the General Strike found me upon the street

    D                               C               A
By then I had a wife and kids their needs I had to meet

    D                                  C              G
The brave new world was coming and the brotherhood of man

      D                 C             A              D
But when the strike was over we were back where we began
[Verse 6]
   D                     C              A             D
I struggled through the thirties out of work now and again

    D                                  C                   A
I saw the Blackshirts marching and the things they did in Spain

       D                          C                    G
But I brought me kids up decent showed them wrong from right

      D             C                A                  D
But Hitler was the man who came and taught them how to fight
[Verse 7]
    D               C                A            D
Me daughter was a land girl she got married to a Yank

    D                               C               A
My son he got a medal for stopping one of Rommel’s tanks

    D                               C                      G
He was wounded near the end of the war and convalesced in Rome

        D              C                      A                 D
He got married to an 'eyetie' nurse and never bothered to come home
[Verse 8]
        D               C           A               D
Me daughter writes me every week a cheerful little note

    D                             C                 A
About the coloured telly and the other things she’s got

       D                           C                 G
She’s got a son a likely lad he’s just turned twenty-one

  D              C                A             D
Now I hear he’s been called up to fight in Vietnam
[Verse 9]
  D               C              A              D
Now we’re on the pension and it doesn’t go too far

    D                                        C               A
Not much to show for a life that’s been like one long bloody war

        D                                C                G
When I think of all the wasted lives it makes me want to cry

   D                    C                   A                     D
I don’t know how we’ll change things but by Christ we’ll have to try