Robin Williamson - Return No More | Текст песни

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• Robin Williamson
• Return No More

In bonny Strathnaver we had game and plenty
our moorland birds our mountain deer.
Clear ran the rivers with trout and salmon
before the gentry forced their game laws here.

Chorus: Return no more, the piper's playing,
The ship must sail, and so must we.
Return no more, my heart is breaking
and bitter tears I'll cry for thee.

For Cheviot sheep and for greed they drove us
from our native homes and rightful land.
It was Patrick Sellars put this sorrow on us
with the fire and the guns of his clearance gangs.

They burned our houses and our belongings,
they drove us out with what clothes we wore
in bitter winter, devoid of shelter,
to where the cruel waves break upon the rocky shore.

No work in Glasgow, no food to travel,
among the rocks our cattle died.
We sold salt herrings, we lived on nettles
'til there was little left us but just our pride.

Then by the thousands and the tens of thousands
as indentured servants our passage paid
with our wedding rings and our fathers' medals
to sail for Canadian shores or Americay.

Author's notes: This is about the Highland Clearances, a long
succession of brutal evictions begun in the early 19th century to
open up land for sheep farming. One of the most vicious was the
Strathnaver clearance of 1814. A contemporary newspaper account
of the sailing of an emigrant vessel mentions the lament played by a
local piper on that occasion: Cha till mi tuille - I shall return no more.
Hence the title here.


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