Intro: C Em D-G D G (3x) C Em D-G D
G
If you're down by Queen and Britain streets
D G
You'll find Stonecutter's Lane
The house that my Grandfather built
D G
Where I was born and raised
C G
My Granddad was a mason
D C
And my father in his time
D G C
When my time came I signed as an apprentice lad
INTERLUDE: Em D-G D G C Em D-G D G
The early Nineteen Hundreds
D G
Were a rich, fat afternoon
We were cutting stone like demons
D G
No work was done too soon
C G
We were hired out on seven jobs
D C
And so to take the slack
D G C
We put out advertisements for apprentice lads
INTERLUDE: Em D-G D G C Em D-G D
Bridge:
You'd never find a better crew
C G D
They knew what work was
Cornices and lintels
C G
They laid stone like they were gods
D
To hear the hammers ring out
Am ~ C
You'd think it was a song
G
In August, Nineteen Fourteen
D G
In the sultry summer heat
They took a vote in Ottawa
D G
The drums began to beat
C G
Honour, glory, us or them
D C
The story doesn't change
D G C
To a man they all enlisted, my apprentice lads
INTERLUDE: Em D-G D G C Em D-G D
G
I didn't say that I agreed
D G
'Cause I knew what war was
It was worker killing worker
D G
For some politician's cause
C G
And off to battle they all marched
D C
They gassed them at Cambrai
D G C
The dogs of war had done for my apprentice lads
INTERLUDE: Em D-G D G C Em D-G D
Bridge:
In Nineteen Sixteen fire broke out
C G
Parliament was razed
D
The call went out for masons
C G
To rebuild and to re-lay
D
It was the contract of a lifetime
Am ~ C
The house upon the hill
G
So they came out from Vancouver
D G
They came down from Montreal
Master masons everyone
D G
They were answering their call
C G
There was no man under thirty
D C
No man whose work I didn't know
D G C
The fields of France had swallowed the apprentice lads
INTERLUDE: Em D-G D G C Em D-G D
G
It's Nineteen Twenty-One now
D G
I'm standing at the peak
About to cap the Peace Tower off
D G
There's no one here can speak
C G
The mortar for that stone we mixed
D C
With clay from Flanders' Fields
D G C
Laid it in it's place for those apprentice lads
D G C
Yeah, we laid it in it's place for those apprentice lads
OUTRO: Em D-G D G C Em D-G D G C Em D-G D G