The Last o the Clydesdales

Pete Shepheard: Archie Webster who wrote this song in the 1950s was caretaker at the village hall in Strathkinness outside St Andrews when I met him around 1963. John Watt’s group The Tregullion and ourselves from St Andrews folk club were singing on some event in the hall and in the interval we naturally graduated to the local Strathkinness Inn. John quickly struck up a conversation with Archie who in no time at all had sung John the local bothy ballad Tattie Jock. Archie was a horse ploughman all his working life and had composed The Last of the Clydesdales in praise of the horses he had worked with on the nearby farm of Denbrae where the farmer had maintained the old ways well into the 1950s.

Pete (vocal and melodeon) with Tom (fiddle and vocal) and Arthur (whistle)

1: O come aa ye young ploughboys that list tae my tale,
As ye sit roond the tables a drinkin your ale;
I’ll tak ye aa back tae a far distant day,
When I drove the last Clydesdales that worked on Denbrae,
When I drove the last Clydesdales that worked on Denbrae.

2: There were twa bonnie blacks, wi white faces and feet,
In the hale o the roond, they could never been beat;
You’d hae lookit gey far, ’twixt the Forth and the Tay,
For tae match thae twa Clydesdales, the pride o Denbrae,
For tae match thae twa Clydesdales, the pride o Denbrae.

3: They were matchless in power in the cairt or the ploo,
And ma voice and ma hands on the reins they weel knew;
There wis never ae thocht in their minds, but obey;
Ma twa gallant Clydesdales, the pride o Denbrae,
O ma twa gallant Clydesdales, the pride o Denbrae.

4: But the time it wears on and the winters grow cauld,
And horses, like men, can dae nocht but grow auld;
But I mind on them still, though it were yesterday,
When I drove the last Clydesdales that worked on Denbrae,
When I drove the last Clydesdales that worked on Denbrae.

c p 2006 Springthyme Records • Springthyme Music