The Great Brickyard Disaster

A new ballad by Matt and Paul Ord, to be sung to the tune of "The Green Fields of Canada"

O! Listen to me all you fine GAELIC paupers,
For this tale I relate, it were well you did heed,
I will sing of one dolorous day in December,
And the brickyard disaster of STEVENAGE town.

‘Twas in the black year of eighteen-forty-four,
When I last bid farewell to old Erin’s bright shore,
When I cried “Fare thee well dear old mother and father,
For it’s ne’er I’ll return to this land anymore!”

The great shame it is mine, who forsook my own nation,
To wander and ramble this wide world around,
Into HERTFORDSHIRE’S county the devil did lead me,
To mine the red clay that lies under the ground.

I was barely three years when I first took to rambling,
And my wee little brother but eighteen months grown,
But we shouldered like men all the bricks we could carry,
In the hellish brick-yards of that dark Saxon shore.

Oh! The men of the brick-yard were starving and dirty,
In their mouths were foul curses more often than meat,
And oft us poor wee-uns they’d try for to capture,
Between slices of bread for to make a scant meal.

In the pits of our oxters great rats made their dwelling,
The foul tempest soon pluck’d all the hair from our heads,
In the seat of our drawers the gray badger and hedgehog
Did nightly contend for our few scraps of bread.

On the rain-befoul’d eve of that dreadful disaster,
In the prickly hedgerow we fitfully slept,
And Oh! What a nightmarish vision assailed me!
What a dire premonition was mine as I drempt!

For it seemed that the stacks of the brick-yard were fallen
On the workers and orphans, and covered them oe’r,
I heard wailing and moaning, and shrieks of vexation,
For the ground was strewn red; not with clay – but with gore!

When I woke with a start in that still early morning,
The skylark and magpie were still in their bed,
And I woke my wee brother with news of my vision;
In the hope of good tidings, to the brick-yard we sped.

How we trembled to look on that sad devastation,
The thing had occurred and was just as I’d drempt!
Almost all had been lost when the brick-yard was buried,
Only I and my brother from that same fate exempt.

So my brother and I, we decided that morning,
To depart from that country, and make no delay,
In the SOUTHAMPTON dock-yards a clipper we boarded,
To renew our lost fortune in AMERICAY.