Voices in the Hills
(Dick McCormack)
(Cho.)
For the mountains know more than they tell;
and more than you or I ever will.
There's magic hiding underneath your country windowsills;
and there's voices in the hills.
Oh, my name is Gary Bartley, I was born here in the mountains.
I've worked all of my adult life in the mills;
And my people have been farming here for seven generations,
And now my brother Wayne's the only one who's farming still.
The oldest tombstones in the graveyard stand up over my forbearers (sic)
There are hills and roads and one creek around that bear my family's name;
But now, like exiles in our own land, we live haunted by the old ways
Like the Indians that were driven out when first my people came.
(Cho.)
The old ways had their hardships, and the winters were too lonely;
But they knew where they belonged, in a world they could understand.
'Till the cities closed in on us, and our one choice grew too simple:
You go broke from paying taxes, or get rich from selling land.
(Cho.)
And now my children will all grow up like the children in the city;
Living in the countryside, but strangers to the land;
And their pleasures come in packages of styrofoam and fiberglass;
Using as a mantlepiece wood tools once made by hand.
And the children from the city come up looking for the good life
Of the picture-card New England of a long forgotten day.
God, I know the dream they're looking; believe me, no one loved it more
Than he who held it in his hands and watched it fade away.
(Cho.)
(Repeat 1st verse)
And there's voices in the hills...
Voices in the hills...
Copyright Dick McCormack
SBK
Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!