| We lived over yonder banks
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| Where those tall cranes touch the sky
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| Down beside the dockyard wall
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| Where those terraced houses lie
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| And I think we lived at number four
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| Or was it number six?
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| It was such a long, long time ago
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| I can’t remember which
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| We lived over yonder banks
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| Over there
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| We played tag on yonder tip
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| When the watchman was away
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| Up and down we used to run
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| A hundred times a day
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| When the shipyard’s sirens blew
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| We’d chase each other home
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| But that was quite some time ago
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| Some thirty years or so
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| We lived over yonder banks
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| Over there
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| Well I’m at the station now
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| Waiting for the evening train
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| Wondering if by some small chance
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| I might pass this way again
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| Though I left the town where I was born
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| Deep inside I know
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| A little will remain with me
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| No matter where I go
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| For we lived over yonder banks
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| Over there
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| And I was born in the shadow of a fair field clean
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| Where the blast of the freighter’s horn
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| Was the very first sound that reached my ears
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| On the morning I was born
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| I lay and I listened to the shipyard sounds
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| Coming out of the great unknown
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| And was sung to sleep by the mother toungue
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| That was to be my own
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| But before I grew to one year old
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| I heard the siren’s scream
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| As a city watched in the blacked out night
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| A wandering searchlight beam
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| And then at last I woke and rose to my first day of peace
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| When I learned that the battle to stay alive
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| Was never going to cease
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| I sat and listened to me father tell
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| Of the days that he once knew
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| When you either sweated for a measly wage
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| Or you’d join the parish queue
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| As times grew harder day by day
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| Along the riverside
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| I ofttimes heard my mother say
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| It was tears that made the clime
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| Now I’ve sat in the school three nine to four
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| I’ve dreamed o' the world outside
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| Where the riveter and the plater watch
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| Their ships slip tae the clibe
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| I’ve served my time behind shipyard gates
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| And I sometimes mourn my lot
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| But if any man tries to mess me about
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| I fight like my father fought
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| We lived over yonder banks
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| Over there |