Lyrics

A parlor full of people all clapping hands in time
A young man plays a fiddle while another spins a rhyme
The whiskey flows so freely as its passed around the room
The fiddler's fast and furious as he starts another tune

Next morning in the sunlight, he has a child on each knee
Telling stories of the old days and of how it used to be
In his home so far away across the chilling waves
He tells them that they will return but he'll never see those days


I would've called him Granda? and he may have called me lad
As he told me tales of Erin and he sang songs bold and sad
Would he stand inside my bedroom door and fiddle me to sleep?
Kiss me lightly on my forehead, say a prayer for my keep

Daughter was just thirteen, son was not much more
When he died fighting fires in the city of New York
And as he sank into the ground the bagpipes shrieked and moaned
For another native Irishman who died so far from home

The daughter grew up and married, and had kids of her own
And as one boy got older she could recognize the tone
The lilting sound at church one day as he sang a hymn
And when he learned to play she knew her father was in him

I would've called him Granda? and he may have called me lad
As he told me tales of Erin and he sang songs bold and sad
Would he stand inside my bedroom door and fiddle me to sleep?
Kiss me lightly on my forehead, say a prayer for my keep

As the boy gets older he starts to feel his Irish pride
But nothing that he does can fill the emptiness inside
Searching for his native roots, he looks, he seeks, he tries
He cannot ask his mother cause it always makes her cry

Alone with his guitar he loves to sing the ballads old
And there's times he hears a fiddle in the deep depths of his soul
And he cannot help wondering, everytime he plays
Would Granda be proud of the man that I became today?


I would've called him Granda and he may have called me lad
As he told me tales of Erin and he sang songs bold and sad
Now I'm standing at his grave and he don't say a thing
Oh Granda can you hear me, it is for you that I sing