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It's been some time since I've been to see the folks at home,
I've led a one-way wayward life since I started out alone;
I said goodbye to rocks and crags, there were better things for me,
Now I long to hear again the pounding of the sea.
I long for to be seated 'round the old pot-bellied stove,
To hear again the yarns were spun 'bout old times in the cove;
I long for to be jigging with Phil Corbett in the bay,
To see his lovely sisters on their way to mass to pray.
I long to smell the cool salt air when clouds race down the sky,
When the nets are spread and the traps are pulled and the dories high and dry;
We'd sit around your table and play at Forty-Fives,
And whisk away our winter days. What happened to our lives?
I sometimes see in vision a land that beckons me,
To get on back to live with her in that house there by the sea;
But she's long gone and I hear that house has been torn down,
From way out here this is my song: I wish I'd stayed around.
From way out here this is my song: I wish I'd stayed around.
Recorded by Paul Pearcey (Paul Pearcey: Up Close, trk#3, 2000)
See more songs by Paul Pearcey.
From John McLeod's Rules Of Card Games:
Forty-Fives - a descendant of the Irish game Spoil Five. It is much played among the Irish population in the New World - especially in Nova Scotia - the most popular version being one with bidding, technically known as Auction Forty-Fives, and also sometimes called One Hundred and Twenty, which is more logical given that 120 is the target score and the number 45 has no relevance to the game.
