The fishermen of Port Quin/when the men went out to sea

Times were hard, and the table bare
Storm season on its way
And the children cried for food to eat
Hunger wouldn’t go away
They talked of times when the boats came in
With herring and the pilchard fish
And they sailed for Wales trading coal and lead
And there was plenty for their smallest wish
But that was then, and now was worse
and the children cried in vain
When someone said shoals were seen
They resolved to go to sea again

CHORUS On a Sabbath day, on a sabbath day
When the men went out to sea
On a sabbath day when the men went out to sea

And the sea was up and the clouds were low
And a storm was coming near
But they pulled their boats down the shingled beach
And they tried to drown their fear
And their families watched from their shuttered rooms
As the men braved the roiling sea
And the rain battered hard on the window panes
As the wind screamed down the chimneys
And they dreamed all night of the heaving waves
As the men fought the stinging spray
And they waited for the dawn when they would all return
With food for another day

CHORUS

Next morning the grey skies came and the waves crashed in
The gale screamed its mortal last
So they looked for the boats coming back to the cove
But they looked and the hours passed
All that day and the next day too
Till the truth was plain to know
All the men were lost, their spirits spent
In the vasty depths below
For they had gone to fish on the Sabbath plain
When all should stay and pray
And they were drowned, they were swallowed up
No one heard their desperate cries.

CHORUS

That is the legend of the deserted cove,
The women who walked away
Who left their homes for evermore
For the tragedy that day
Except it probably never happened quite like that
No storm, no Sabbath ban
No men who drowned in the fearsome waves
And could not come again.
It’s just that the pilchards left and the herring too
And they found no way to live
So they walked right away from the Port Quin shore
And looked for other ways to survive

CHORUS when they left their homes and hearth

From Trelights they went to find other towns
Where they could work for bread
Or they sailed from Padtsow to far off Canada
To find a foreign life instead
And this is the story of what we do
When we have nothing else to lose
We leave our homes and our hearts behind
To build life in another land
And that’s where we make a new estate,
and something begins anew
And the children eat and grow and thrive
But we cry and dream of what we knew

CHORUS. On a Sabbath day, on a Sabbath day
When the men cross the oceans deep
On a Sabbath day When the men cross the oceans deep

So you can put up walls to keep them out
Then your country stays pure and true
But just remember when the bad times come
on the other side it could be you.