Oh on Clyde’s bonny banks where I lately did wander,
To the village of Blantyre where I chanced to stray,
I espied a young woman, was dressed in deep mouring,
So sadly lamenting the fate of her love.

I boldy stepped to her, said I, ‘My poor woman,
Come tell me the cuase of your trouble and woe,
I do hear you lamenting the fate of some young man,
His name and what happened him I’d like for to know.’

Well sighing and sobbing she at length then made answer,
‘John Murphy, kind sir, was my true lover’s name.
Twenty-one years of age, and of mild good behaviour,
To work in the minds of High Blantyre he came.’

On the eleventh of December I long will remember,
In health and in strength to his labour did go;
But on that fatal morning without one moment’s warning,
Two hundred and ten in cold death did lie low.

There were fathers and mothers, there were widows and orphans,
In stone field High Blantyre where hundreds do mourn,
There was old aged parents for their sons they loved dearly,
By that sad explosion will never return.

But they say it’s not right for the dead to be grieved,
There’s nothing but trouble bestowed upon me,
He’s gone from this world, but a short time before me,
In hopes to rejoin him in sweet unity.

The spring it’ll come with the flowers of summer,
That blow through it wildness so lovely and fair,
I will gather the snowdrops, primroses and daisies,
Round my true lover’s grave I will transplant them there.