Print This Page#02043 Print This Page
Attention Newfoundlanders, come listen to my song,
Concerning how we're treated, I won't delay you long;
Oh, how you are put under I'll have you understand,
By the merchants and the government right here in Newfoundland.
The merchants they don't worry or neither do they care,
How hard you have to work and toil your family for to rear;
For they do get their money to lock up in their chest,
And set back in their office and there to take a rest.
The time will soon be coming when we will have to go,
Out on the stormy ocean where many's the gale do blow,
To try to earn a living by bitter frost and snow,
And then return in winter when you're really on the dole.
When you are queued up in the fall with not a bite to eat,
You'll first go to your merchant and they'll make you retreat;
They'll say they cannot help you, go home and get the dole,
And that'll mean a little more to add amongst their gold.
Go to Matt Hollet's office with hunger on your brow,
He'll look at you and say to you I cannot help you now;
Go home and sell your cattle for when that all is gone,
Come back into my office and I'll see about a loan.
'Tis for Johnny Collins he got a fluent speech,
You can easy hear him talking when he's going out of reach;
But when you get near a ship's crew you'll hear them all explain,
Oh, Johnny he's gone trouting and tomorrow we'll have rain.
Besides the royal commissioners there is the Canada gang,
The people they are all busy in favour of the king;
But I am not in favour or neither do I care,
I know what Henry did when he married Anne Boleyn.
Then Herod took the collection as the merchant names wrote down,
They say you'll never be in want when clothing come around;
You would get rubber boots, likewise caps and coats,
But the pair of mitts they sent to me was wool cut from a goat.
There is a man above us, I'm sure He's done no wrong,
He is too pure and holy to mention in my song;
But I know someday He'll judge them, and He will judge them weIl,
And send them all together on their honeymoon to hell.
And to conclude and finish I have no more to say,
I'm getting old and feeble my locks are turning grey;
I'm getting old and feeble, there's one thing I can say,
I never was a robber when God calls me away,
Collected in 1951 from Leo Martin of Trepassey, NL, and published in MacEdward Leach And The Songs Of Atlantic Canada © 2004 Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA).
