The Eighteenth of June (Trad.)

The Battle of Waterloo was fought on 18 June 1815. Jim Shoubridge of the British Rifle Brigade survived the battle and years later he taught this song to Henry Burstow, from whom Vaughan Williams collected the song in 1905. It has since been recorded by the likes of Norma Waterson & Martin Carthy. Here's my impromptu version---I played guitar, mandolin, lyre, and hand-drum. And although my voice is now knackered for singing, I also included a guide vocal, in order to provide the words to the melody, in case anyone fancies a crack at singing it. Will add stems. Note that "Boney" was the nickname British troops gave to Napoleon Bonaparte.
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Lyrics:
You people that live at home easy
Free from the riot of war
Never knowing the dangers of battle Safe with your family secure
Know that long has the scythe of destruction
Been sweeping our nation around
But it never yet cut with such keenness
As on the great eighteenth of June

[Chorus after each verse]
What a sad heart had poor Boney
To take up instead of a crown
A canter to Brussels and Paris
Lamenting the eighteenth of June

From half past five in the morning
To half past seven at night
All the people stood round in amazement
For they never had seen such a sight
When the thunder of five hundred cannon
Proclaimed that the battle was done
And the moon in the night overshone
As recorded the eighteenth of June

You lasses whose sweethearts were yonder
Go gaily and buy a black gown
A thousand I'll lay to a hundred
He fell on the eighteenth of June
Sixty thousand stout-hearted mortals
That fell, made an awful pall tune
And many a poor heart will remember
With sorrow the eighteenth of June ...More