Categories: uncategorized
Date: 22 September 2005 15:52:11
Ok, so I said there were a few things I wanted to share. This is a song which could quite possibly be my theme song, if I were to have one (though I have slight objections to the fourth verse- if that were me I'd have gone with him!). I've lost count of the times I've sung it, and it has many memories attached to it, but I hadn't heard it for ages till I heard it on a friends computer recently.
Ewan McColl was born in Salford and lived most of his life in the north of England, being particularly fond of the hills of the Peak District - his ashes were scattered over Bleaklow after his death in 1989. The Manchester Rambler was written in the early 1930's for a protest march over Kinder Scout, but still has relevance today for anyone who has ever enjoyed the freedom of the open moors.
I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler from Manchester way
I get all my pleasure the hard moorland way
I may be a wage slave on Monday
But I am a free man on Sunday
I've been over Snowdon, I've slept upon Crowden
I've camped by the Wain Stones as well
I've sunbathed on Kinder, been burnt to a cinder
And many a tale I could tell
My rucksack has oft been my pillow
The heather has oft been my bed
And sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead
The day was just ending as I was descending
By Grindsbrook, just by Upper Tor
When a voice cried, Eh you, in the way keepers do
He'd the worst face that ever I saw
The things that he said were unpleasant
In the teeth of his fury I said
Sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead
He called me a louse and said, Think of the grouse
Well I thought but I just couldn't see
Why old Kinder Scout and the moors round about
Couldn't take both the poor grouse and me
He said, All this land is my master's
At that I stood shaking my head
No man has the right to all mountains
Any more than the deep ocean bed
I once loved a maid, a spot-welder by trade
She was fair as the rowan in bloom
And the blue of her eye matched the June moorland sky
And I loved her from April to June
On the day that we should have been married
I went for a ramble instead
For sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead
So I walk where I will over mountain and hill
And I lie where the bracken is deep
I belong to the mountains, the clear-running fountains
Where the grey rocks rise rugged and steep
I've seen the white hare in the gulley
And the curlew fly high over head
And sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead
Ewan McColl