Chorus:
"Roll the cotton down, bullies,
Roll the cotton down!"
I thought I heard the Old Man say,
"Roll the cotton down!"
There's a song I hear resounding,
As a song will sometimes do;
It takes me away to my younger days
And the men and the ships I knew –
To the men I knew in a time long gone
And a ship of some renown,
When I sailed away to Mobile Bay
Where they roll the cotton down! (CHO)
I mind the feel of the noonday sun
And the warm wet dockside smells –
Rum and spice, and the stevedores,
And the Cajun demoiselles,
The shuffle and beat of the naked feet
On the levees all around –
How I longed to stay in Mobile Bay
Where they roll the cotton down. (CHO)
It takes me away from the dingy streets
Of this cold grey Northern town;
I can hear the yarns my shipmates spun
And the rum old songs we sung,
The way of a ship at a twelve-knot clip
When we sailed the wide world round,
And I mind that day in Mobile Bay
When they rolled the cotton down. (CHO
It's the width of a world from here to there,
It's the half of my life since then,
And it's ill to tread, so I've heard said,
A trail where you've lost a friend;
So I may sail east or I may sail west,
Far from this northern town,
But I'll not stray to Mobile Bay
Where they roll the cotton down. (CHO2X)
(Based on a poem by Cicely Fox Smith
from Punch Magazine,
Volume 186, February 28, 1934, p. 248.
Adapted for singing by Charles Ipcar, © 2008
Tune for verse after You Gave Me a Song
by Alice Gerrard, © 1975.
Tune for chorus is after chorus of Let It Be
by the Beatles, ©)
|
Dick Dufresne
Kennebunkport, Maine |