The Old Man's Song chords by Christy Moore

SimplifiedD · C · A · G

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Verse 1
D 
C 
At the turning of the century
A 
I was a lad of five
D 
Me father went to fight the
C 
Boers and never came back alive
A 
D 
Me mother had to bring us up
C 
G 
and no charity she did seek
D 
C 
So she rubbed and scrubbed and scraped
A 
D 
along on seven and six a week
C 
At the age of twelve I left me school
A 
D 
and went to get a job
With grown up kids me ma could
C 
A 
do with the extra couple of bob
D 
I knew that longer schooling would
C 
have stood me better stead
G 
D 
C 
But you can't afford refinement when
A 
D 
you're struggling for your bread
When the
Great
C 
A 
War started, oh, I didn't hesitate
D 
I  took the
Royal
C 
A 
Schilling and I went to do me bits
D 
We fought in
Blood and
Sweat and
C 
G 
Mud, three years or thereabouts
D 
Till I copped some gas in
C 
A 
D 
Flanders and was invalided out
C 
When the war was over,
A 
and we'd settled with the
D 
Hun
We went back to our cities,
C 
A 
for we taught the fightin' dun
D 
But we went when the dead,
C 
and we soon were out of work
G 
D 
C 
For soon we had to fight,
A 
D 
for the right to go to work
C 
In twenty -six, the general strike,
A 
D 
it found me on the streets
Be then I had a wife and kids,
C 
their needs I had to meet
A 
D 
But the brave new world was coming,
C 
G 
and the brotherhood of man.
D 
C 
But when the strike was over,
A 
D 
we were back where we began.
C 
I struggled through the thirties,
A 
D 
out of work now and again.
I saw the black shirts marching,
C 
and the things they did in
A 
Spain.
D 
But they brought me kids of decent,
C 
and showed them wrong from right.
G 
But
D 
C 
Hitler was the lad who came,
A 
D 
and showed them how to fight.
C 
My daughter was a land girl,
A 
she got married to a yank
D 
My son,
C 
he got a gun for stoppin' run of
A 
Rommel's tanks
D 
He was wounded near the end
C 
of the war and convalesced in
Rome
G 
D 
C 
He married a nighttime nurse
A 
D 
and never bothered to come home
C 
My daughter writes me every week,
A 
a cheerful little note
D 
About the colour telly and the
C 
A 
other things she's got
D 
She's got a son, a likely lad,
C 
G 
he's just turned twenty -one
D 
C 
But now I hear he's been
A 
called up to fight in
D 
Vietnam
C 
Now we're on the pension,
A 
and it doesn't go too far
D 
That much to show for a life that's
C 
A 
been like one long bloody war
D 
When I think of all the wasted lives,
C 
it makes me want to cry
G 
D 
C 
I  don't know how we'll change things,
but by
A 
Christ we'll have to try