Past and Present

Lyrics

1 Gilliver

Come gather round you ganger lads, wherever you may be
And rest yourselves a little while and listen unto me
I’ll tell to you a story and every word is true
Of Gilliver, the finest horse a ganger ever knew

I started driving ponies first when I were 12 years old
I drove a horse called Gilliver and he were as good as gold
He never bit and he never kicked at me nor anyone
And when it comes to work, I swear he’d pull a thousand ton

We used to work a rising road and the tubs they ran down free
The time I fell in front of them, I were sure it had finished me
I thought me day had come, me lads, I’m telling you no lie;
It wasn’t no use to shout for help, there was nobody else nearby

But I reckoned without Gilliver as I scrambled down that road
He knew he couldn’t stop them tubs it were far too great a load
But I felt his head come into me back and his nose come into me thigh
And he shoved me into an empty stall as the tubs went rolling by

And the only thing I told the men when they came to look for me
If it hadn’t have been for Gilliver I’d have met my Jubilee
It shows that kindness pays, you know, for I’m sure I’m right to claim
That if I’d been cruel to Gilliver he’d never have done the same

So lads fill up your glasses and we’ll drink a health around
To every man and every horse as works beneath the ground
Let’s drink to better treatment, lads, of ponies by their men
And let’s remember Gilliver and pass ‘em round again!

Glossary:
Ganger – pony driver;
Tubs – small coal wagons, used underground;
Stall – a section of the coalface set aside for one man to work.
‘Gilliver’ is a local word for a wallflower

3 Lovely Joan

A likely lad as you ever did see
Cruising around in his XR3
Cruising around with his eyes open wide
And there stood Joannie, hitching a ride

His very first words, as she got into the car
Were ‘Hey, there, darlin’, are you going far?’
She turned and blushed with a smile so shy,
Says he to himself, ‘I’ll be there by and by!’

So he cruised along, feeling pleased with himself
She was eyeing up his wallet on the dashboard shelf
And as they turned off the motorway
Not one word did Joannie say

‘Do you see that lay-by under the trees,
Where you and I could do as we please?
We could make it together for an hour of two …’
And Joannie says: ‘I don’t mind if I do’

But as he stepped behind a tree
She jumped into the driving seat and turned the key
He shook his fist and he cursed and swore
But his words were drowned by the engine’s roar

And late that night in a far off town
She’s counting his money as she settles down
The rain is falling, the night’s so dark
And he’s still got ten more miles to walk.
 

5 Peg of Derby

A final year apprentice in the Technician grade
At the Rolls-Royce works in Derby
Fell hopelessly in love with a woman in that town
And they say that her name, it was Peggy

Now, if I remember rightly, it was 1971
When the company went down, and when all the deals were done
There were many out of work and some they chose to go
And seek employment far away from Derby

‘Tomorrow I must leave you, Peggy
Though my going may not grieve you, Peggy
I’m taking one last chance: won’t you come away with me?
And I’ll take you so far away from Derby

‘For out in the east, they say, there’s fortunes to be made
And there you could live like a lady
We’d have a house to call our own, a swimming pool and all
Oh, won’t you come and share it with me, Peggy’

‘Why ever should I want to go away with you
And leave all my friends here in Derby?
You know, my sister, she got married to an oilman in Bahrain
She says the loneliness out there can drive you crazy’

Next morning at the airport he was sad and withdrawn
His mates they looked at him with pity and scorn
‘There’ll be pretty girls galore when we get to Singapore,
They’ll soon take his mind off this Peggy’

But far from his mind she never would stay
They say he wrote to her almost every day
Every morning without fail he’d go and check the mail
But he never got a letter back from Peggy

He used to be a young Technician engineer
Well on the way to a glittering career
Now in a bar in Singapore he begs for one drink more
And he raises his glass to Peg of Derby

‘Why ever should I want to go away with you
And leave all my friends here in Derby?
You know, my sister, she got married to an oilman in Bahrain
She says the loneliness out there can drive you crazy’
 

7 Rip Van Winkle

Returning from the mountains to the place where I was born
Just a day had passed since I went to find my sheep
The crows rose up black above the cornfields of the valley
As though they were arising from a dark and dreamless sleep
And the sky had slightly changed above the mountain range
The river through the town didn’t seem to run so deep
The wild bull has taken my own true love away
And the flower that she gave me has withered in my hand

‘Mother, dearest mother, come open up the door
Open up the door and pull back the pin’
Nothing but a stranger’s face in answer to my greeting
A black look to meet me as I try to step in
Oh where is the stream to wash my body clean?
And do you have a towel to dry my running skin?
The wild bull has taken my own true love away
And the flower that she gave me has withered in my hand

Who are all these people, who fill the streets around me?
And where are the thoughts from the crash about my head?
Where is the girl who gave me the flower?
And why is the flower so dead, so dead?
‘Oh stay, can’t you tell, you must remember well
Today was the day that we were to be wed …’
The wild bull has taken my own true love away
And the flower that she gave me has withered in my hand

I’ll build myself a shack on the side of the mountain
Above the roaring rocks where the river runs down
I cannot truly say my mind is at ease here
As brown turns to green and green back to brown
And the people surely know I’d be better far to go
A stranger in a foreign land, a thief about town
The wild bull has taken my own true love away
And the flower that she gave me has withered in my hand
 

9 Lowlands

I dreamed a dream the other night
Lowlands, lowlands away, my John
I dreamed a dream the other night
Lowlands away

I dreamed of Martin Luther King
Lowlands, lowlands away, my John
And I hoped his dream hadn’t died with him
Lowlands away

From Alabama to Soweto
From Stephen Lawrence to Steve Biko

The nightmare still comes back each night
If we only dream in black and white

I dreamed the day had almost come
When we faced the past and then moved on

When human rights should be enshrined
Not in laws of state but in states of mind

I dreamed a dream the other night …

 

12 The Manager’s Daughter

There was a young collier lived in our town
And he was one of the hard-working kind
And he fell in love with our manager’s daughter
And she to him was well inclined

They did their courting secretly
Said not a word to anyone
Until one evening they were seen together
Down in the woods where they had gone

And the news spread fast from man to man
From man to man throughout our town
And it wasn’t long before the young lad’s father
Had heard the news that was going round

Then the father to his son did say
And his words he spoke full bitterly:
‘I was down in the Plough, it was yesterday evening
And no man there would drink with me

‘And I heard them say to one another
When they thought I could not hear
That my son was courting our manager’s daughter
With her fine silks and her satins rare

‘And the words they spoke and the looks they gave me
They grieved your father’s heart full sore
So either you leave your manager’s daughter
Or never return to my house no more’

Well the son he couldn’t say one word
But in confusion he fled straightway
And he left our town that self-same evening
And he never returned to this very day

And when the manager’s daughter she found him gone
She wept and she cried both night and day:
‘Oh cursed be the people of our town
For they have driven my young collier away

‘I’ll leave my father, I’ll leave my mother
I’ll leave my house and my home behind
And I’ll leave these black hills of Nottinghamshire
And search this land over my young collier to find’

14 Seafarers

Shanghaied in San Francisco
We fetched up in Bombay
They set us afloat on an old lease boat
That steered like a bale of hay

And away, you Santy!
My dear Annie!
Oh, you New York girls
Can’t you dance the polka?

We sweated in the Tropics
Where the pitch boiled up on deck
And we saved our hides, little else besides
From an ice-cold North Sea wreck

We’ve drunk our rum in Portland
And crashed through the Bering Straits
And we’ve toed the mark on a Yankee barque
With a hard-case Down-east mate

We know the track to Auckland
And the light on the Kinsale Head
And we’ve crept close-hauled as the leadsman called
The depth of the channel bed

And then, paid off in London,
It’s oh! For a spell ashore
But pretty soon we’ll ship on a Southern trip
And be outward bound once more

Singing ‘Time for us to leave her’
Singing ‘Bound for the Rio Grande’
But as the tug turns back we’ll follow her track
For a last, long look at the land

And when the purple disappears
And only the blue is seen
They’ll send our bones to Davy Jones
And our souls to Fiddler’s Green