Traditional lyrics (from A Family Heritage: The Story and Songs of LaRena Clark by Edith Fowke, Jay Rahn, and LaRena LeBarr Clark) with music by Rob Hollett.
Come all you true born shanty-boys and listen on to me,
And when that e’er a woodsman that you may chance to see
We are a merry set of boys; so handsome, young and fine.
We spend a jolly winter a cutting down the pine.
So it’s hurry up Harry, and Tom or Dick or Joe
And you may take the pail boys, and for the water go.
In the middle of the splashing, the cook will dinner cry,
And you ought to see them hurry up for fear they’d lose their pie!
There’s blackstrap molasses, squaw buns as hard as rock
Tea that’s boiled in an old tin pail that smells just like your socks
The beans they are sour and the porridge thick as dough,
And when we stash them in our craw, it’s to the woods we go
A hitching up our braces and binding up our feet
A grinding up our axes for our kind is hard to beat!
A shouldering up our cross cut saws and though the woods we go,
We make a jolly set of boys a-trudging through the snow.
So deeply in the tree of pine we notch to guide its fall
And not a man amongst us will hear the timber call;
And when it crashes to the ground we’ll fall to with a will,
A trimming up the branches and a swearing fit to kill.
Arriving at the shanty, wet, tired, and with wet feet,
We all take off our socks and boots our supper for to eat.
At nine o’clock or there about into our bunks we’ll crawl
To sleep away the too short hours until the morning call.