Eilif (Song About the Soldier and His Wife) - Duke Special

Your gun is precise, and your bayonet’s nice

But the ice on the river won’t hold you

You’ll drown in a trice if you march on the ice

And lonely, cold death shall enfold you

Thus spoke his wife as he whetted his knife

Hoisting his pack, he said marching is my life

For when you’re marching no woman can scold you

We’re marching into Poland, then we’re marching off to Spain

With your bayonet sharpened

With your sharp bayonet you’ve no need to explain

For there’s no woman who’s ever controlled you

When you’re marching no woman

When you’re marching no woman can scold you

Oh, bitter her tears, she was younger in years

Wiser than he, so she told him

March off if you must, they will all come to dust

For only a coffin shall hold him

Off goes her man, he will write when he can

And women have wept since the world first began

And how the sound of her sorrow consoled him

With the moon on the shingles, I see white on the snow

Goodbye to your husband

So long to your husband, and then back home you’ll go

Where you will wait for the fate you foretold him

You will wait for the fate

You will wait for the fate you foretold him

It isn’t a joke, your life is like smoke

And someday you will wish you had tarried

How quickly you’ll fall, oh God help us all

A soldier should never get married

He tumbled the dice, and he soon paid the price

They gave him his orders to march on the ice

And then the water rose up all around him

And the water rose up and it drowned him

Through Poland, through Spain, his poor wife searched in vain

But he’d vanished: she never found him

He was gone and his wife

He was gone and his wife

He was gone and his wife never found him

Oh she never found him