Here’s to the days when your soul would sing,
Long, long ago,
Bloody fingers cut by strings,
A long time ago,
Here’s to the tear and the sneer and the snarl,
The heavy head in the morning,
And the songs that called the soldiers home,
Here’s to the days when your soul would sing

Clean the ocean from your boots,
Wipe the salt from your brow,
Strike the bow and play us home,
The bell called out for one more round,
The clouds of smoke, the sea of glass,
The spirits boil your timid heart,
The squeezebox swayed and heaved and sighed,
Clean the ocean from your boots

(CHORUS)
We played The Bonnie Diamond and The Parting Glass,
We shared the whisky like we share the past,
The fiddle played like the wild sea spray,
But the words got lost along the way,
When we played The Bonnie Diamond and The Parting Glass

You sang a song of love and hate,
For the guns in the border towns,
You sang for the boys at the factory gates,
And the ships out somewhere in the sound,
One for the mother in the lonely grave,
One for swell of the deep dark wave,
That rolled around you all those years ago,
When you sang a song of love and hate

(CHORUS)

It’s the wintertime you loved the most,
With the fire burning low,
You’ve been a liar and you’ve been a ghost,
From the shelter of the shadow,
Batten down the hatches boys,
It’s filthy and it’s noisy,
It’s lonely down below,
It’s the wintertime you love the most

(CHORUS)

I started writing the song around ten years ago when I lived in Orkney and finished it when I heard about this competition. The song is about my relationship with music as I get older so there were some significant changes made when I finished it as I'm ten years further down the line! The lyrics are inspired by George Mackay Brown and from hearing the song The Bonnie Ship the Diamond sung in my old local pub in Kirkwall.