Sea Green Singers - Repertoire

Sea Green Singers - Blood and Gold - lyrics and score

Blood and Gold
bass: 'Blood, blood, blood and gold' to bar 11
1. On rides a captain and 300 soldier lads
Out of the morning mist and thro’ the silent snow.
Whistling gaily rides the captain at their head,
Behind him soldier boys sadly weeping go.

Chorus:
O Mother weep for your son, He is gone to kill and die.

2. For when you took my gold and swore to follow me
You sold away your lives and your liberty.
No more you’ll till the soil, no more you’ll work the land,
No more to the dance you’ll go and take girls by the hand.

Ch.

3. You’ll weep, you’ll die by the keen edge of the sword,
All alone by the muddy Danube shore.
He gave the order for the drummers to beat their drums
That mothers all might know the life a soldier lives

Ch.

4. Unfurl your ragged banner and raise your pale young face,
You’ll all go in the fire, there’ll be no hiding place
O Mother, hear the drumbeat in the village square
O Mother, that drum’s for me to go a soldier there

Mothers, sisters, wives, weep for us
Marked as Cain we die alone

Blood and Gold - notes extracted from Cairril (2006) Blood and Gold Deconstructed
Tune comes from Rumania or possibly Bulgaria, a melody collected by Bela Bartok. The song was written in the 1990’s in response to slaughter in Croatia and elsewhere as Yugoslavia was torn apart. The authors are Andy Irvine and Jane Cassidy who are Irish. The last line ‘Marked as Cain we die alone’ can be read as the soldiers accepting that their killing of the enemy cannot be justified. In other words t hey are guilty of murder; every last one of the 300 who started out lies dead, alone, in a muddy anonymous pit.