They came from Scandinavia, the land of midnight sun And crossed the North Atlantic when this century was young They'd heard that in America every man was free To live the way he chose to live and be who he could be Some of them were farmers there and tilled the frozen soil But all they got was poverty for all their earnest toil They say one was a sailor who sailed the wide world round Made home port, got drunk one night, walked off the pier and drowned My mother was of Scottish blood, it's there that she was born They brought her to America in 1924 They left behind the highlands and the heather-covered hills And came to find America with broad expectant dreams and iron wills My granddad worked the steel mills of central Illinois His daughter was his jewel, his son was just his boy For thirty years he worked the mills and stoked the coke-fed fires And looked toward the day when he'd at last turn 65 and could retire (Chorus) And the sons become the fathers and their daughters will be wives As the torch is passed from hand to hand And we struggle through our lives Though the generations wander, the lineage survives And all of us, from dust to dust, we all become forefathers by and by The woman and the man were wed just after the war And they settled in this river town and three fine sons she bore One became a lawyer and one fine pictures drew And one became this lonely soul who sits here now And sings this song to you (Chorus) By and By By and By
They came from Scandinavia, the land of midnight sun And crossed the North Atlantic when this century was young They'd heard that in America every man was free To live the way he chose to live and be who he could be Some of them were farmers there and tilled the frozen soil But all they got was poverty for all their earnest toil They say one was a sailor who sailed the wide world round Made home port, got drunk one night, walked off the pier and drowned My mother was of Scottish blood, it's there that she was born They brought her to America in 1924 They left behind the highlands and the heather-covered hills And came to find America with broad expectant dreams and iron wills My granddad worked the steel mills of central Illinois His daughter was his jewel, his son was just his boy For thirty years he worked the mills and stoked the coke-fed fires And looked toward the day when he'd at last turn 65 and could retire (Chorus) And the sons become the fathers and their daughters will be wives As the torch is passed from hand to hand And we struggle through our lives Though the generations wander, the lineage survives And all of us, from dust to dust, we all become forefathers by and by The woman and the man were wed just after the war And they settled in this river town and three fine sons she bore One became a lawyer and one fine pictures drew And one became this lonely soul who sits here now And sings this song to you (Chorus) By and By By and By
