My name is Cil Delory, though a Cullen I was born

Here on Prince Edward Island, where the waters meet the morn

I’ll tell you of my girlhood days in simple words and true

And of the deadly fever that we called the Spanish Flu.

The year was nineteen eighteen, and my age was seventeen

I had two older sisters, there were nine more after me

And had our mother lived to see the springing of the year

There would have been another babe to christen and to rear.

Now as the war across the sea drew to its bitter end

There rose an epidemic that claimed as many men

The ships that brought our valiant boys back home again from war

They also brought the new disease onto our peaceful shore.

The place where I was teaching school shut down to slow the spread

My brother Tom was freed from class, he went to work instead

Down at the docks of Charlottetown, while loading up the freight

He caught the fever and the chills and felt the grip of fate.

Eugene and Art and Gertie too took sick within the week

Brave cousin Maggie came to help although our hopes were bleak

Our mother spent her restless days by her poor children’s side

Alas the day she joined them in a sickbed cool and wide.

The tenth day of November, I was tending the young ones

The doctor said the end was near,  I went to her at once

My father held her weakening hand, she laboured for her air

The last rays of the setting sun spun gold into her air.

The undertakers in those times were working night and day

So Doctor Leadwell laid her out for just one night of wake

And though no neighbour dared to cross our fever-stricken door

Papa brought us one by one to see her face once more.

Morning on the way to church, word spread to everyone

The peace was signed in Europe and the victory was won

We heard the pipes and trumpets at their gayest and their best

As we laid our mother in the quiet grave to rest.

The worst was over for the boys, and Gertie’s hair grew back

Aunt Laura came and stayed awhile to help make up our lack

The neighbours they pitched in to reap the praties and the grain

By these good folk and grace of God we turned to life again.