I Will Bring You Home

                                 Marion Parsons’ Songbook

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I’ve had enough of swiling ships, the squalor and the gore

The Harlaw sank beneath me and I said I’d hunt no more

But Albert John was just sixteen and bound to try his hand

Along I went for one more run aboard the Newfoundland


    Stay right by me, follow to my lead

    They’ll work you twice what you can take and pay you half your need

    Your ma and me, we couldn’t see to send you out alone

    I brought you to this frozen waste, and I will bring you home.


The ship was jinked right from the pier, our dreams were dark and strange

The shifting floes they jammed her in, the whitecoats out of range

The glass showed dirty weather on a dawn as red as fire

For half the day we crossed on foot in search of Kean’s desire.


    Stay right by me, follow to my lead

    To chase a captain’s folly and to serve an owner’s greed

    Your ma and me, we couldn’t see to send you out alone

    I brought you to this frozen waste, and I will bring you home.


A chilling wind caught up the snow to drift and hide the trail

A whisper rose, “They’ll be no man alive to tell the tale,”

With songs and thoughts of home they faced a night out in the cold

But of that long night’s miseries, the half cannot be told.


    Stay right by me, follow to my lead

    What hope we have is to be men and stay upon our feet

    Your ma and me, we couldn’t see to send you out alone

    I brought you to this frozen waste, and I will bring you home.


The daylight rose and crossed the sky, again was falling low

We reached the end of faith and strength and sank into the snow

How little can a poor man do to keep a son from harm

I wrapped him in my guernsey and I locked him in my arms.


    Stay right by me, follow to my lead

    And if your hour is come, me by’e, then let it come for me

    Your ma and me, we couldn’t see to send you out alone

    I brought you to this frozen waste, and I will bring you home.


Chords: (4/4)


      G              D       G           C    Am       D

I’ve had enough of swiling ships, the squalor and the gore


     C             Am             Am7              D

The Harlaw sank beneath me and I said I’d hunt no more


    D7               G                C       Am       D

But Albert John was just sixteen and bound to try his hand


  C               G             Am                D

Along I went for one more run aboard the Newfoundland


G

Stay right by me, follow to my lead


         C                   G                C       Am        D

They’ll work you twice what you can take and pay you half your need


     D7             G               C       Am    D

Your ma and me, we couldn’t see to send you out alone


    C                   G     Em        G        D        G

I brought you to this frozen waste, and I will bring you home.



 

  1. •Lyrics and music © 2004

  2. •The story of Reuben and Albert Crewe, a father and son who died in the Newfoundland sealing disaster of 1914

  3. •See bottom of the page for chords and comments

Hear the demo (MP3, 3:54):

I wrote this as a follow-up song to my Newfoundland Sealing Disaster in order to tell the same story from a different perspective.  When I wrote the line “and father took son in his arms to hide him from the wind” (in the other song), I was thinking of Reuben and Albert Crewe: they were found frozen in each other’s arms, with the father’s coat wrapped around the son, and their bodies were transported home that way.


My source was Cassie Brown’s book Death on the Ice; you can find a brief online article about the Crewes’ story here.  Kean in the second verse refers to a sealing captain who was legendary for both his success in finding seals and his indifference to the sealers’ welfare.