Through the streets of Palomino,
sometimes barefoot in the rain,
He played an old Lodian,
since he was just a wain.
His father disappeared in France with the Irish Fusiliers,
And the big mill said, son, you're fourteen now,
There is no time for tears.
But the spenners and the doffers and the boys who dry the flax,
To make the finest Ulster linen,
They're never coming back.
And the river bridge keeps rolling past this Palomino child,
And with it all the faces I remember with a smile.
Pig-Eye Gee and Wee Mary and the singing Eliza Jane,
From this old tattered photograph,
they all smile at me once again.
When the mill was fairly turning,
the finest cloth in all the land,
And the pay was low,
but you had your pride,
There was work for willing hands.
But the spenners and the doffers and the boys who dry the flax,
To make the finest Ulster linen,
They're never coming back.
And the river bridge keeps rolling past this Palomino child,
And with it all the faces I remember with a smile.
I've watched them tear the roof off,
that old mill upon the bridge,
And I saw three generations pass,
the ghosts of the linen trade.
My granda and my father and their women spent their days,
Drying flax and spanning thread for a poor mill worker's pay.
The rain was falling when I left,
as the roof came tumbling down.
King William,
he still rode the walls of old Palomino town,
And them young men on the corner with faces hard and cold,
I can't make fine Irish linen boys when you're signing on the dome.
But the spenners and the doffers and the boys who dry the flax,
To make the finest Ulster linen,
They're never coming back.
And the river bridge keeps rolling past this Palomino child,
And with it all the faces I remember with
a smile.