Lyrics with meaning

[Urbane Guerrilla]

9/8 time.

Darkness is fading, the day it is dawning
The fields they are empty, nae workers today.
Farmers and young men all have been going
To battles in lands that lie far away.

Yet one day we'll see them come by the hillside
Husbands and sons will return to their homes.
Yet still my heart bleeds; the price of their young pride
Their widows and sweethearts left sadly to mourn.

The call when it came found their menfolk aye ready,
Each knew the reasons or that's what they thought.
Then came the doubting but still they were steady
Slow dying in cold clay a'cursing their lot.

Yet one day we'll see them, there on the hillside
Though knowing in hearts they are but a gleam.
The grief in the long glen, the gloom at the fireside
Will pass like a Spring breeze that never has been.

--Alex Campbell

The lyrics are tough to find by title on the net. I had to pull these searching under the pipe-tune name, "Battle of the Somme" on Mudcat.org. The recording I've got, an anthology album, has some small variations in the words -- "minnies" for "widows," "and cursing" for "a'cursing" here.