[Intro]
[Verse 1]
These miles of dry stone walls
That hold, in ploughed brown fields, these kingly halls
The dead of centuries in hills of sand
The stones that bind them
Are proud as what lies behind them
And varied as the counties in this curious land
[Verse 2]
In Cumberland they built them
On hills that surely must have killed them
Through broom and juniper and stunted ling
Two thousand feet over
With just a tarpaulin cover
They crouched in wind and rain and waited for the spring
[Verse 3]
In Aberdeenshire valley
The fields were only open quarry
The stones were gathered up and made to stand
But with every ploughing
You d think it was stones they d been sowing
The walls grew sadder here than any in the land
[Verse 4]
The Irish built in courses
Of single stones the size of horses
Of glacial boulders, without edge or face
But if you could view them
Above, the sun lighting through them
You d swear the hills were edged in broken granite rays
[Verse 5]
When Pict and Viking took
Stone pages from some prehistoric book
A sandy flagstone under Orkney hills
Hailing there the while
And left history in the islands
This is what water, wind and time and toil reveal
[Verse 6]
From Yorkshire s limestone hills
Through Derbyshire to the coast of Wales
From Shetland s salty rocks to Devon lane
Just look and discover
Two walls that lean against each other
You ll never see them in quite the same way again
[Verse 7]
These miles of dry stone walls
That hold, in ploughed brown fields, these kingly halls
The dead of centuries in hills of sand
The stones that bind them
Are proud as what lies behind them
And varied as the counties in this curious land