Ewan MacColl - Manchester Rambler

I've been over Snowdon,

I've slept upon Crowden

I've camped by the Wainstones as well

I've sunbathed on Kinder,

been burned to a cinder

And many more things I can tell

My rucksack has oft been me pillow

The heather has oft been me bed

And sooner than part from the mountains

I think I would rather be dead

I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler from Manchester way

I get all me pleasure the hard moorland way

I may be a wage slave on Monday

But I am a free man on Sunday

The day was just ending

and I was descending

Down Grindsbrook just by Upper Tor

When a voice cried "Hey you"

in the way keepers do

He'd the worst face that ever I saw

The things that he said were unpleasant

In the teeth of his fury I said

"Sooner than part from the mountains

I think I would rather be dead"

He called me a louse

and said "Think of the grouse"

Well I thought, but I still couldn't see

Why all Kinder Scout and the moors roundabout

Couldn't take both the poor grouse and me

He said "All this land is my master's"

At that I stood shaking my head

No man has the right to own mountains

Any more than the deep ocean bed

I once loved a maid, a spot welder by trade

She was fair as the rowan in bloom

And the bloom of her eye matched the blue moorland sky

I wooed her from April to June

On the day that we should have been married

I went for a ramble instead

For sooner than part from the mountains

I think I would rather be dead

So I'll walk where I will over mountain and hill

And I'll lie where the bracken is deep

I belong to the mountains, the clear running fountains

Where the grey rocks lie ragged and steep

I've seen the white hare in the gullies

And the curlew fly high overhead

And sooner than part from the mountains

I think I would rather be dead