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The Drover's Song
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Another song about the people and stories of the Welsh Marches - from the Built to Last CD
root chords deportees graham bellinger
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Acoustic rock n roll, blues, country and folk. Songs sung like they matter.
Welcome to my page. It will contain my own recordings of my own songs. There will also be some recordings with my old partners, Steve Goodchild (who now lives in Canada) and the Deacons - we were a popular West Midlands folk group in the 1980s and still get together once in a very blue moon. I am based in Chester UK and play every week in the city at Alexanders as well as other gigs around the area. For recordings by my current bands 'Root Chords' and 'Deportees' please go to www.soundclick.com/rootchords or for more information about me or the bands go to our website www.grahambellinger.jimdo.com, www.deportees.jimdo.com and www.rootchords.jimdo.com Hope you enjoy something you find here - do let me know.
Song Info
Genre
Acoustic • Acoustic Folk
Charts
Peak #223
Peak in subgenre #29
Author
Graham Bellinger
Rights
Graham Bellinger.
Uploaded
September 12, 2005
Track Files
MP3
MP3 4.6 MB • 128 kbps • 0:00
Story behind the song
This song owes its inspiration partly to a book - 'The Drovers' Roads of Wales' by Faye Godwin and Shirley Toulson, but mostly it is inspired by a poem 'The Drover's Farewell' by Harri Webb. The song was written in the summer of 2001 after a stay at the Devils Bridge Hotel in mid Wales. One of my forbears was apparently a drover, though he worked between Norwich and London. These men were hugely important to the rural economy in the 18th and 19th centuries - some drovers continued to work until the 1930s - and farmers and others who used their services as carriers had to entrust them with their stock, their profits and their livelihoods during their tough and sometimes dangerous journeys. Family gossip has it however that they were not always so trustworthy with their wives……..
Lyrics
THE DROVER'S SONG I was tired of home by fourteen Two fields and the same four walls My mind set on roving I went for the droving And never went back home at all And I’ve lived on this road for thirty years now From the Marches to the Irish Sea From Aber through Knighton, the Berwyn and Ruyton To the banks of the Severn and Dee Over the hills you seek the path you once made Over the hills one day your track will fade I’ve seen a million sheep safely to market And a million cattle over the hills Beef sides for Chester, Ludlow and Gloucester Wool for the Newtown mills I’ve carried letters to the Parson in Tywyn News of Napoleon at Waterloo I’ve drunk all the ale in Rheidol vale And sang all the way to Beriew I’ve fought robbers in the Hafren forest Dodged lightning on the high Kerry Ridge Washed from Abermule clean down to Welshpool When floods took the old Severn Bridge I’ve a wife on the shore at Aberaeron Weeps and waves as I leave on a drive And another who waits at old Chester gates So glad to see me arrive And I thought this would last me for ever But now I’m beginning to doubt My travelling life, my journeys end wives May soon find their time running out I see navvies at work in the valleys Laying tracks from Dyffryn to Dover You can move cattle fine on a railway line No need to be paying a drover My sons on the quay at Aberaeron Will grow up to sail the tide And take Welsh ploughboys to be Yankee cowboys On the American plains so wide And my children in Deeside and Shropshire Will cast iron for engine and track And the days of the drover will soon be long over And never once they’ll look back
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