Lyrics:

How do you do, young Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit here, by your grave side
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done
I see by your grave stone your were only nineteen,
When joined the great fallen in 1915
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean,
Or Willie McBride was it slow and obscene

Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the dead march as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and Chorus
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers of the Forest'

Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind,
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
Although you died back in 1915,
In some faithful heart are you forever nineteen
Or are you stranger without even a name,
Enclosed there forever behind a glass pane
In an old photograph torn, battered and stained,
Fading to yellow in a brown leather frame

Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the dead march as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and Chorus
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers of the Forest'

Willie McBride I can't help wonder why,
Did all those that died there, know why they died
Did they believe when they answered the call,
Did they really believe that the war would end war
For the sorrow, the suffering, the glory the pain,
The killing and dying were all done in vain
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again and again, and again and again

Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the dead march as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and Chorus
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers of the Forest'

The sun now it shines on the green fields of France,
There's warm summer's breeze makes the red poppies dance
The trenches are vanished, long under the plow,
There's no gas, there's no barbed wire, no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard, it's still no man's land,
A thousand white crosses, in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation butchered and damned

Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the dead march as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and Chorus
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers of the Forest'