The Shipyard Apprentice... Yonder Banks- - Archie Fisher

We lived over yonder banks

Where those tall cranes touch the sky

Down beside the dockyard wall

Where those terraced houses lie

And I think we lived at number four

Or was it number six?

It was such a long, long time ago

I can’t remember which

We lived over yonder banks

Over there

We played tag on yonder tip

When the watchman was away

Up and down we used to run

A hundred times a day

When the shipyard’s sirens blew

We’d chase each other home

But that was quite some time ago

Some thirty years or so

We lived over yonder banks

Over there

Well I’m at the station now

Waiting for the evening train

Wondering if by some small chance

I might pass this way again

Though I left the town where I was born

Deep inside I know

A little will remain with me

No matter where I go

For we lived over yonder banks

Over there

And I was born in the shadow of a fair field clean

Where the blast of the freighter’s horn

Was the very first sound that reached my ears

On the morning I was born

I lay and I listened to the shipyard sounds

Coming out of the great unknown

And was sung to sleep by the mother toungue

That was to be my own

But before I grew to one year old

I heard the siren’s scream

As a city watched in the blacked out night

A wandering searchlight beam

And then at last I woke and rose to my first day of peace

When I learned that the battle to stay alive

Was never going to cease

I sat and listened to me father tell

Of the days that he once knew

When you either sweated for a measly wage

Or you’d join the parish queue

As times grew harder day by day

Along the riverside

I ofttimes heard my mother say

It was tears that made the clime

Now I’ve sat in the school three nine to four

I’ve dreamed o' the world outside

Where the riveter and the plater watch

Their ships slip tae the clibe

I’ve served my time behind shipyard gates

And I sometimes mourn my lot

But if any man tries to mess me about

I fight like my father fought

We lived over yonder banks

Over there