Lyrics - The Tide

When the stones were laid at the close of the day,
And the time and the tide began to turn,
From the northern seas came fire and sword,
To pillage, plunder, raze and burn...
On the ravaged earth they laid their feast,
Pain and sinew , blood and bone,
They took the land and the silver cross,
But never did find the black lodestone...

Years went by and others came, Angle, Saxon, Norman, Dane,
Knight and Lord and peasant man,
Tilled the soil where the lines once ran...
Took to the road the Caesars made, cut my flesh with a ploughshare blade,
When they saw the places I had been,
They called me the man in Lincoln Green...

At Kirkley Hall my end was brave Every standing stone became my grave,
They took the stones from the bridestones ring,
In churches prayed where I used to sing,
My work was done and there came the day,
When men could find their own pathway,
And in the end they broke my back,
With the metalled road and the railway track...

But on the hills in the mud and rain,
My lines of force they still remain,
To the end of time you still may roam,
If you can find the travellers stone,
If you can find the travellers stone,
The black lodestone my mother made,
Not made of jet, not made of jade,
But made of a rock of a different grade...

Now where can I find the black lodestone,
Now the winter days are gone?
Is it in the cairn on the distant moor?
Or the donkey stone by the cottage door?
The black jack stone in the childrens game,
It lies in the earth from whence it came On a distant shore...