> Folk Music > Songs > The Lorry Ride

The Lorry Ride

[ Roud - ; Mudcat 21487 ; Liza Chera (Liza Tubb)]

Graham and Sheila Nelmes sang The Lorry Ride in 1983 on their Traditional Sound Recordings album High Is the Tower. They noted:

Combing through song collections rarely unearths material about coffee plantations in Guatemala! Liza Tubb of Buxton wrote these words to the Irish tune of Casadh an tSúgáin [The Twisting of the Rope] after reading of how male peasants subjected themselves to a treacherous lorry ride in order to make money picking coffee. The ‘galera’ is the tin hut provided for sleeping accommodation.

Steve Turner sang The Lorry Ride in 1987 on his Fellside album Braiding. He noted:

The Lorry Ride has been one of my favourite songs over the past year and is one of many fine works by Liza Tubb of Buxton in Derbyshire. The tune is the Irish Casadh an tSúgáin. The story was inspired by a newspaper cutting and it was sung to me by Russell Clegg, captain of the indefatigable ‘Kamikaze’ cricket team for which I have occasion to play when the weather in Rochdale permits.

Kate Rusby & Kathryn Roberts sang The Lorry Ride in 1995 on their Pure Records album Kate Rusby & Kathryn Roberts.

Cross o’th Hands sang The Lorry Ride on their 1996 album Handmade.

Lyrics

Steve Turner sings The Lorry Ride

My love is a tall and a handsome man, the best you’ll see,
And he’s gone away to the plantations to pick coffee.
The recruiter says, he won’t come back and I need no longer bide,
But I’m waiting here until the day of the lorry ride.

Chorus (after each verse):
My days are hard, my nights are long and I am so alone
But I’ll dream a dream that will never end when he comes home

The recruiter says, the hours are long, the work it is so hard,
And he won’t survive, the cold hard night in the galera.
And in the fields he’ll breathe the fumes of the death insecticide,
And anyway, he won’t survive the lorry ride.

My love must work a twelve hour day beneath the sun,
And he must work three long months before he’s done.
He must sleep beside a dying man who lies weeping from the burns,
And I fear my love will not be so young when he returns.

(repeat first verse)

Last chorus
My days are hard, my nights are long and I am so alone
But I’ll dream a dream that will never end if he comes home