When
I was a lad
© 1963 by Jim Andris
When I was a lad,
I asked my dad,
When will I marry, oh my?
He said to me,
"Just wait and see,
You'll find a girl by and by.
"Take my advice.
Don't pay the price
Of searching the world for a wife.
Find you a girl from town,
Stay here and settle down,
And live here the rest of your life.
So I looked around.
None were to be found.
And so I decided to roam.
Early in the spring
I bought a ring,
And I abandoned my home.
For many years, I know,
I searched high and low
For someone to stand by my side.
None was to be had.
Then came the news so sad:
I heard that my parents had died.
I went back to the farm,
And there, soft and warm,
A girl knelt by two unmarked graves.
'Twas homely Sally Brown,
A girl I knew from the town,
Her hair, flaxen hair, hung in waves.
I dropped to my knee
And took her to me;
'Twas then that my happiness began.
I tended the farm.
Protected her from harm,
And shortly she bore me a son.
Now he's a lanky lad.
He looks just like his dad.
And soon he'll be leaving like me.
I'll give him the same advice,
And he'll pay the same price:
Too late he'll sink to his knee.
And so the story goes—
Each life is full of woes;
No man can live for his son.
But always he tries,
And always he dies.
It's that way the cycle's begun.
It's that way the cycle's begun.
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