Lyr Add: My Youngest Son Came Home Today (E Bogle) To Thread - Forum Home

The Mudcat Café TM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=20769
5 messages

Lyr Add: My Youngest Son Came Home Today (E Bogle)

25 Apr 00 - 11:37 AM (#217655)
Subject: Lyr Add: MY YOUNGEST SON CAME HOME TODAY
From: Richard Bridge

I don't think this is in the database.

My youngest son came home today.
His friends marched with him all the way.
The flutes and drums beat out the time,
As in his box of polished pine,
Like dead meat on a butcher's tray,
My youngest son came home today.

My youngest son was a fine young man,
With a wife a daughter and a son.
A man he would have lived and died,
'Til by a bullet sanctified.
Now he's a saint, or so they say,
They brought their saint home today.

Above the narrow Belfast streets,
An Irish sky looks down and weeps
On children's blood in gutters spilled
For dreams of freedom unfulfilled.
As part of freedom's price to pay,
My youngest son came home today.

My youngest son came home today.
His friends marched with him all the way.
The flutes and drums beat out the time
As in his box of polished pine,
Like dead meat on a butcher's tray,
My youngest so came home today,
And this time he's home to stay.

HTML line breaks added. --JoeClone, 23-Jul-02.

25 Apr 00 - 12:07 PM (#217674)
Subject: RE: Post Lyrics 'My Youngest Son'
From: DebC

This was written by Eric Bogle.

Debra

25 Apr 00 - 01:08 PM (#217712)
Subject: RE: Post Lyrics 'My Youngest Son'
From: Malcolm Douglas

For the original lyrics -a little different- as sung by Bogle himself, and posted by Wolfgang Hell in an earlier thread, see: My Youngest Son Came Home Today.

Malcolm

25 Apr 00 - 01:45 PM (#217725)
Subject: RE: Post Lyrics 'My Youngest Son'
From: Fedele

Also sung by Socialist rocksinger Billy Bragg on the EP "The Internationale". See www.billybragg.co.uk.

26 Apr 00 - 11:34 AM (#218292)
Subject: Lyr Add: HE'S COMING TO US DEAD (trad Appalachian)
From: Áine

This song reminds so much of a traditional Appalachian song called HE'S COMING TO US DEAD:

One morning when the office had opened,
a man quite old in years,
approached the telegraph office,
showing signs of grief and tears,
As the clerk approached him,
his trembling words did say,
I'm waiting for my boy, sir,
he's coming home today.

You've made a sad mistake, sir,
and you must surely know,
This is the telegraph office, sir,
and not the town depo,
If your boy is coming home,
the clerk did quickly say,
You'll find him with the passengers
at the station just over the way.

You do not understand me, sir,
the old man shook his head.
He's not coming as a passenger,
but by express instead.
He's coming home to mother, sir,
the old man gently said,
He's coming in a casket, sir.
He's coming to us dead.

Just then the whistle pierced their ears,
and someone quickly cried.
The old man rose in breathless haste
and quickly rushed out side.
Then a long white casket
was lowered to the ground.
Then showing signs of grief and fear,
as they all had gathered 'round.

Don't handle the casket roughly, boys,
it contains our darling Jack.
He left here as you boys now are.
This way he's coming back.
He broke his dear old mother's heart,
her dreams have all come true.
That this is the way that he'd come back
when he joined the boys in blue.