The Shipyard Apprentice/Yonder Banks

[Part I: Yonder Banks]

[Verse 1]
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

[Refrain]
We lived over yonder banks
Over there

[Verse 2]
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

[Refrain]
We lived over yonder banks
Over there

[Verse 3]
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

[Refrain]
For we lived over yonder banks
Over there

[Part II: The Shipyard Apprentice]

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 Clyde"

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 to the Clyde
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