There Lies An Old Motor
by Dixon, Dusty, Miller
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The cabin is rotten, the steel work is thin Chines are more than well worn Dollies are buckled, the T-stud is bent The sheets are all tattered and torn There are no straps or lines just a pile of old ropes All knotted, too short and too frayed Looks like the hull has never been blacked Since the day that the keel was first laid The holes are broken, the bulls-eye is cracked Fenders are gone from the rear Floorboards are missing, the stern tube is shot Not all that you’d call first class gear Through the mud and the slime inches deep in the hold I can see hard work written thereon One look at the engine, its oil covered sump I can tell every oil seal is gone How many thousands of tons has it held? How many locks does it know? This old motor was once some young boater’s pride But that was a long time ago Now it lies in the reeds and they rob it for spares Soon it’ll be eaten by rust Some dredger driver will bury it deep In a pile of black mud, silt and dust The cabin is rotten, the steel work is thin Chines are more than well worn The dollies are buckled, the T-stud is bent The sheets are all tattered and torn |
| The sleeve notes state that "this is a re-write of ‘There Lies A Workhorse’, a song about an old broken-down road train truck by K. Dixon and Slim Dusty. The more mature may remember Slim's big UK hit ‘A Pub with No Beer’ in the late 1950’s. With similar sentiments as the original, the words were altered to recall the days when redundant working boats were abandoned and allowed to rot up some derelict canal arm. The remains of many a boat still lie under a municipal car park that once was the town's canal basin." |
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