Well how do you do young Willie McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by you're grave side?
And rest for a while 'neath the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day and now I'm nearly done.

I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in nineteen sixteen
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Or young Willie McBride was it slow and obscene?

Chorus:
Did they beat the drums slowly?
Did they play the fife flowly1?
Did the sound the dead march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers Of the Forest'?

Did you leave 'ere a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
And although you died back in nineteen sixteen
In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen?

Or are you a stranger without even a name?
Enclosed and forgotten behind a glass pane,
In an old photograph torn battered and stained,
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.

Did they beat the drums slowly?
Did they play the fife flowly?
Did the sound the dead march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers Of the Forest'?

The sun now it shines on the Green Fields Of France,
There's a warm summer breeze that makes the red poppies dance,
And look how the sun shines from under the clouds,
There's no gas, no barbed wire, there's no gun firing now.

But here in this grave yard it's still No Mans Land,
The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand,
To mans blind indifference to his fellow man,
To a whole generation that was butchered and damned.

Did they beat the drums slowly?
Did they play the fife flowly?
Did the sound the dead march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers Of the Forest'?

Young Willie McBride I can't help wonder why?
Do those that lie here know why did they die?
And did they believe when they answered the call?
Did they really believe that this war would end wars?

The sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain,
The killing and dying was it all done in vain?
For young Willie McBride it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again and again.

Did they beat the drums slowly?
Did they play the fife flowly?
Did the sound the dead march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers Of the Forest'?

Did the band play 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers Of the Forest'?

Note
1. The word 'flowly' comes from The Fureys and Davey Arthur
version of this song, in other versions it is 'lowly'