Dalhousie History - Song - submitted by Jan - [email protected] - posted 5 August, 2001.

Inscribed to Her Brother John

Air - "John Anderson my Joe, John."

Just fifty years last June, John,
 Just fifty years last June,
Our mither selt her wheel, John,
 An' father selt his loum.
And bade good-bye to Lanark Mills,
 And in the Promp did go
To settle on Dalhousie hills,
 Just fifty years ago.

Three months that day we sailed, John,
 Just three months to a day;
We came to Perth, and hailed, John,
 The bonnie winding Tay;
An' on the ground at mither's back
 We soundly slept, you know,
Where Malcolm's mither selt a drab
 Most fifty years ago.

Our faithers went into the bush
 An' cut the tall threes there,
For ilk ane said he'd ha'c a hoose
 If 'twas but ten feet square,
To keep his wife an' wanes from
 John Frost and Janet Snow,
An' though 'twas humble, 'twas a home,
 Just fifty years ago.

Those homes were in the wilderness,
 As you may well suppose,
But labor made the wilderness,
 To blossom like the rose.
With farms well tilled an' barns well filled,
 An' milk and honey flow,
An' corn and wine, where beech an' pine
 Grew fifty years ago.

Then Will Hood was the teacher
 O'weans baith big an' wee';
John Gemmill was the preacher,
 And doctor, too, was he;
But then Dr's seldom inquired
 For either tooth or toe;
Their services were not required
 Just fifty years ago.

But time, the unwearied marcher,
 Hath many changes wrought;
And death, the unerring archer,
 Ten thousand ties have broke-
The ties that bound our kindred
 Together here below,
By death's hand has been sundered
 Since fifty years ago.

His tongue is silent us often blessed,
 And oft for us did pray
Her lips are sealed that often kissed
 Our falling tears away;
Our brothers two an' sisters three
 Are in their graves laid low,
That looked like living long as we
 Did, fifty years ago.

And when we cross Death's dreary brook
 That runs so deep and cold,
May the great Shepherd's staff and crook
 Direct us to the fold
Where we will meet our long-lost lambs,
 Sae dear to us below;
And where we'll greet our sirens an' dames
 Like fifty years ago.