Features/Dear Green Place

From Sedes Draconis

I had a hell of a time trying to find the lyrics to this song recently, so I'm posting them. It's an excellent song, with well-crafted mythic imagery of a city. I may use it inspire work on cities; perhaps Tâl Katar. I've heard it from Battlefield Band, but I don't know if they wrote it, or someone else.

• Battlefield Band
• After Hours: Forward to Scotland's Past
• The Dear Green Place

It was a clear mornin' down near Bann
Where it meets and runs with the River Clyde,
And they tell the tale of the holy one
Who was fishing down by the riverside.

A holy man from Fife he came,
His name, they say, was Kentigern,
And by the spot where the fish was caught
The Dear Green Place was born.

Though the salmon run through the river stream,
And they salted them by the Banks of Clyde,
And the faces glow'd as the silver flow'd,
And the place arose by the riverside.

There was cloth to dye and horse to buy,
The traders came from all around
And they raised a glass to the Dear Green Place,
The place that was a town.

Chorus: There is a town that once was green,
And the river flowed to the sea.
The river flows forever on,
But the Dear Green Place is gone.

When the furnaces came to fire the iron,
And the folk were thrown from far off land,
Then the Irish man, and the Highland man,
And the hungry man came with willin' hands.

They wanted work, a place to live,
Their empty bellies wanted filled,
And the farmyard was another world
From the dirty, overcrowded mill.

Now, you may have heard of the foreign trade,
And fortunes made by tobacco lords,
But the working man slaved his life away
And a narrie grave was his sole reward.

A dreary room, a corwded slum,
Disease and hunger everywhere,
And the price to pay was another day
And fight the anger and despair.

Chorus

A thousand years have been here and gone
Since Kentigern saw the Banks of Clyde.
And how many dreams? and how many tears?
In a thousand years of a city's life.

A city hard, a city proud,
And no mean city it has been.
Perhaps tomorrow it yet may be
The Dear Green Place again.