The Fiddler Of The Reels

There was a girl I longed was mine

Sweet Caroline my suit declined

It was plain to see, her love was blind

For the fiddler of the reels

 

For when he played

Oh how she danced

She fell into a kind of trance

My love it never had a chance

Because of the fiddler of the reels

 

Although I was country bred

What was my home to me seemed dead

I left for London town and fled

Her and her fiddler of the reels

 

For several years I never heard

Ne’er a sign and ne’r a word

I’d forgot my pretty bird

And her fiddler of the reels

 

Then on the mat by penny post

As if the voice twas of a ghost

Her hand declared she loved me most

Not the fiddler of the reels

 

 

I replied that if her heart were true

She’d take the train and start anew

And come and wed in London town

Forget her fiddler of the reels

 

Upon the platform I did stand

I saw her there but in her hand

The hand of a small child whose likeness was

Of the fiddler of the reels

 

My anger rose and how she wept

“The child is his” she said bereft

“But to you alone my heart is left

Not to the fiddler of the reels.”

 

I cursed my luck, the child it cried

My heart it softened me inside

I comforted the little thing

Though she was of the fiddler of the reels

 

We married when we’d saved for bands

Honey mooned the Exhibition stands

And all the wonders I saw there

I forgot that fiddler of the reels

 

I grew to love the child as mine

The years they passed and Caroline

And me we were a family

Long forgot the fiddler of the reels

But city life had got me down

Twas time we turned away from town

And  we headed back to where was once our home

Where she’d fallen for the fiddler of the reels

 

As I looked for work, left the hostelry

My wife and child waited for me

But in the tavern, she did see

The fiddler of the reels

 

And when he played

Oh how she danced

She fell into a kind of trance

And he took the child at his first chance

That blasted fiddler of the reels

 

I looked for them across the heath

The men they mollified my grief

By stating I still had my wife

Who’d not gone back to the fiddler of the reels

 

But it seemed the centre of my life

Was to love the child, not so much my wife

But the dear creature now was snatched away

By the fiddler of the reels

 

I searched at fairs, to no avail

She danced to his bow was the tale

Though for Americay they did set sail

I lost her to that fiddler of the reels

 

But this was many years ago

Where they are now, I do not know

But I curse the man twice stole my love

That fiddler of the reels