Home Lad Home - an evocative song of a lost way of life during the First World War

The poem Homeward was written by Cecily Fox-Smith during World War I. Sarah Morgan came across an unattributed, and partly altered version and set this to a tune for the Mick Ryan opera, All in Day’s Work. This is the version that is sung regularly as Home Lads Home (Dick Henry-Wood performs it so well with a squeeze box). I have gone back to the original poem for my version but still with Sarah Morgan’s marvellous tune. My grandfather was a farrier with the Royal Field Artillery in 1916 and memories of him made this song too emotional to sing for quite a while. This recording finally got me detached enough to enjoy singing the song. Sung by Alan Rosevear in Exeter

HOMEWARD (Cecily Fox Smth witha few tweaks)
Behind a trench in Flanders the sun was dropping low,
With tramp, and creak and jingle I heard the gun-teams go;
And something seemed to 'mind me, a-dreaming as I lay,
Of my own old Hampshire village at the quiet end of day.
Chorus; Home, lad, home, all among the corn and clover!
Home, lad, home when the time for work is over!
Oh there's rest for horse and man when the longest day is done
And they go home together at setting of the sun!

Brown thatch and gardens blooming with lily and with rose,
And the cool shining river so pleasant where it flows,
White fields of oats and barley, and elderflower like foam,
And the sky gold with sunset, and the horses going home!
Chorus; Home, lad, home, all among the corn and clover!
Home, lad, home when the time for work is over!
Oh there's rest for horse and man when the longest day is done
And they go home together at setting of the sun!

Old Captain, Prince and Blossom, I see them all so plain,
With tasseled ear-caps nodding along the leafy lane,
Somewhere a bird is calling, and the swallow flying low,
And the lads sitting sideways, and singing as they go.
Chorus

Well gone is many a lad now, and many a horse gone too,
Of all those lads and horses in those old fields I knew;
There's Dick that died at Cuinchy and Prince beside the guns
On that red road of glory, a mile or two from Mons!

Dead lads and shadowy horses - I see them just the same,
I see them and I know them, and name them each by name,
Going down to shining waters when all the West's a-glow,
And the lads sitting sideways and singing as they go.
Home, lad, home . . . with the sunset on their faces!
Home, lad, home . . . to those quiet happy places!
There's rest for horse and man when the hardest fight is done,
And they go home together at setting of the sun!
Chorus

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#Home_lads_home #WW1 #World_war_I

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