| The poacher and his daughter throw soft shadows on the water in the night.
|
| A thin moon slips behind them as they pull the net with no betraying light.
|
| And later on the coast road, I meet them and the old man winks a smile.
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| And who am I to fast deny the right to take a fish once in a while?
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| I walk with them, they wish me luck when I slip out on the Sunday from the kyle.
|
| And from the church I hear them singing as the ship moves sadly from the pier.
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| Oh, poacher’s daughter, Sundat best, two hundred brave souls share the farewell
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| tear.
|
| There’s a house on the hillside, where the drifting sands are born.
|
| Lay down and let the slow tide wash me back to the land where I came from.
|
| Where the mountain men are kings and the sound of the piper counts for
|
| everything.
|
| Did my tour, did my duty. |
| I did all they asked of me.
|
| Died in the trenches and at Alamein… died in the Falklands on T.V.
|
| Going back to the mountain kings where the sound of the piper counts for
|
| everything.
|
| Long generations from the Isles sent to tread the foreign miles
|
| where the spiral ages meet. |
| Felt naked dust beneath their feet.
|
| Future sun called winds to blow and the past and present hard-eyed crow
|
| flew hunting high and circling low over blackened plains of Eden.
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| There’s a child and a woman praying for an end to the mystery.
|
| Hoping for a word in a letter fair wind-blown from across the sea
|
| to where the mountain men are kings and the sound of the piper counts for
|
| everything.
|
| There’s a house on the hillside, where the drifting sands are born.
|
| Lay down and let the slow tide wash me back to the land where I came from. |