The team

• Ruth Harrison
• Angela Hicken
• Madelaine - the book thief
• Penny
• Rose Ratcliffe
• Rachel the editor
• Jane the Archivist
• Cordelia Gray
• Friday Next
• Jacky Percival

Other teams

• 
• 
• 
• 

Hampshire songs, poems, and ditties Find!

A little bit of light Googling took me to this collection of Hampshire-inspired songs and poems. Many of them are anonymous; some are very simple -- traditional schoolyard chants or labourers' doggerel; but others are touching. My favourite is "Home Lads, Home" -- a nostalgic song sung from the perspective of a soldier serving abroad.

Overseas in India, the sun was dropping low;
with tramp, and creak and jingle, I heard the gun teams go.
And something seemed to set me, dreaming as I lay
of my old Hampshire village, at the quiet end of day.

CHORUS:    And its home lads home,
All among the corn and clover,
Home lads home,
When the working  day is over.
For there's rest for horse and man
When the longest day is done,
And they'll all go home together
at the setting of the sun.


Brown thatch and gardens blooming, with lily and with rose,
The Meon running past them, so quiet where it flows.
White fields of oats and barley, and the elder flowers like foam,
and the sky all gold with sunset, and the horses going home.

CHORUS

Oh Captain, Boxer, Traveller, I see them all so plain,
with tasselled ear caps nodding, all along the leafy lane.
Somewhere a bird is calling, and the swallows flying low,
and the lads are sitting sideways, and singing as they go.

CHORUS

Well, gone is many a lad now, and many a horse gone too.
Of all the lads and horses, in those old fields I knew.
Oh, Dick fell at Givenchy, and Prince beside the gun,
on that red road of glory, a mile or two from Mons.

Dead lads and shadowy horses, I see them still the same,
I see them and I know them, and I call them each by name.
Riding down through Swanmore, when all the west's aglow,
and the lads are sitting sideways, and singing as they go.

And it home lads home,
 with the sunset on their faces,
home lads home,
 to the quiet, happy places
For there's rest for horse and man,
When the longest day is done
and they'll all go home together at the setting of the sun.

And its home lads home,
All among the corn and clover,
Home lads home,
When the working  day is over.
For there's rest for horse and man
When the longest day is done,
And they'll all go home together at the setting of the sun.

14 September 2009 from Rachel the editor

All blog posts | RSS feed

Recent posts

• Postscrpt to a previous find
• The uses of a detective
• Reading Detectives film
• Virginia Smith remembered
• Mary Sumner
• A272: An Ode to a Road (by Andy)
• The hunt continues
• Winchester MP Mark Oaten to publish book
• Chalet School
• Bags of Books and Enthusiasm
• Chalet School author
• Poetry in the pub
• Wealth of words in Winchester
• Hampshire Gets Going

All blog posts

Help the team

Have you got something to contribute? You can contact us to report your clues and you can comment on our blog posts. It doesn't matter where in the world you are!

See posts tagged with