The Harvest Moan

Sid says:  "This song shows you how hard life was in the old days.  That's one of the reasons why you'll never catch me doing no farming.  For a start, you have to be up at the crack of dawn, when I'm usually going to bed.  What I say is that early birds only catch worms, and then they have to go to the doctor to get something for them.  So all in all 'early to bed, early to rise' only means you have longer to wait till the pub opens, and then you have to leave at closing time, just as things are getting going!"

The Harvest Moan appears on Sid's album Boiled In The Bag, and in The Ballad of Sid Kipper.

We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land,

But after that things never go in quite the way we planned;

The moles and mice and magpies come down to eat the grain;

Before a week is over we must scatter the seed again.

All good things around us belong to someone else;

With one accord we thank the Lord, and tighten up our belts.

This time some seeds are left to sprout and poke their young heads out;

They seem both hale and hearty, until we have a drought.

So with the sweat from off our brows we irrigate the crop,

Until at last the rain begins - and then it just won't stop.

But when the downpour ceases a few young plants remain;

The sun lifts up their heads and we begin to hope again.

To think that such fine healthy plants grew from such tiny seeds!

But on examination we find most of them are weeds.

What's left when we have weeded begins to turn to brown,

The time has come to harvest all that has not been blown down.

The yield is poor - in fact, there is just sufficient there

To plough the fields and scatter on the land again next year.

Copyright Chris Sugden, 1989