Well how do you do, Private William MacBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And I'll rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done

And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in 1916
Well I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or Willie MacBride, was it slow and obscene?

[Chorus]
Did they beat they drum slowly
Did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did a bugle sing 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?
And though you died back in 1916
To some fateful heart are you always nineteen?
Or are you just a stranger without even a name
Enshrined forever behind some glass pane
In an old photograph, torn, battered and stained
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame
[Chorus]
Did they beat the drum slowly
Did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did a bugle sing the Last Post and Chorus?
Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest?

The sun's shining now on these green fields of France
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
The trenches have vanished, now, under the plough
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard, it's still no man's land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
To a whole generation who were butchered and damned

[Chorus]
Did they beat the drum slowly
Did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did a bugle sing the Last Post and Chorus?
Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest?

And I can't help but wonder, now, William MacBride
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause?
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well, the suffering and the sorrow, the glory and the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain
For Willie MacBride, it's all happened again
And again and again and again and again
[Chorus]
Did they beat the drum slowly
Did they sound the fife lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did a bugle sing the Last Post and Chorus?
Did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest?