[C]I've been over Snowdon, I've slept upon Crowdon
I've camped by the Waynestones as [G]well
I've sunbathed on
Kinder, been burned to a cinder
And many more things I can [C]tell
[C]My rucksack has oft been me [G]pillow
The heather
has oft been me [C]bed
And sooner than part from the [G]mountains
I think I would rather be [C]dead
Ch: [C]I'm a rambler, I'm a rambler from [G]Manchester way
I get all me pleasure the [C]hard moorland way
I may be a wageslave on[G] Monday
But I am a free man on[C] Sunday
The day was just ending and I was descending
Down Grinesbrook just by Upper Tor
When a voice cried "Hey you"
in the way keepers do
He'd the worst face that ever I saw
The things that he said were unpleasant
In the teeth of
his fury I said
"Sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead"
He called me a louse and said "Think of the grouse"
Well i thought, but I still couldn't see
Why all Kinder
Scout and the moors roundabout
Couldn't take both the poor grouse and me
He said "All this land is my master's"
At
that I stood shaking my head
No man has the right to own mountains
Any more than the deep ocean bed
I once loved a maid, a spot welder by trade
She was fair as the Rowan in bloom
And the bloom of her eye watched
the blue Moreland sky
I wooed her from April to June
On the day that we should have been married
I went for a ramble
instead
For sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead
So I'll walk where I will over mountain and hill
And I'll lie where the bracken is deep
I belong to the mountains,
the clear running fountains
Where the grey rocks lie ragged and steep
I've seen the white hare in the gullys
And
the curlew fly high overhead
And sooner than part from the mountains
I think I would rather be dead
