This is a hauntingly elegiac song by the folksinger Ewan MacColl about a young man who enlisted to fight in the Spanish Civil War. I was slightly disappointed to learn that Jamie Foyers was not a real person, or at least, not one who ever fought in the Spanish Civil War: MacColl in fact adapted the song from an earlier ballad current in Victorian times about a young soldier, Sergeant James Foyers, who died at the siege of Burgos in 1812, during the Peninsular War. But MacColl’s Foyers serves well enough as a composite figure standing for the many idealistic young men who died in that now remote conflict, such as John Cornford (see week 137), and the two friends that MacColl himself had lost fighting the fascists.

MacColl’s song has been covered by various folk artists; I favour the Dick Gaughan version.

Notes:

Fecht: fight.
Strang: strong.
Fitba’: football.
Braw: fine.
Belchite: A town in Aragon, Spain, destroyed in the 1937 Battle of Belchite between the Republican and Nationalist Forces.
Gandesa: The site of two major battles in 1938.

Jamie Foyers

Far distant, far distant, lies Foyers the brave,
No tombstone memorial shall hallow his grave
His bones they are scattered on the rude soil of Spain,
For young Jamie Foyers in battle was slain.

He’s gane frae the shipyard that stands on the Clyde;
His hammer is silent, his tools laid aside,
To the wide Ebro river young Foyers has gane
To fecht by the side o’ the people of Spain.

There wasna his equal at work or at play,
He was strang in the union till his dying day;
He was grand at the fitba’, at the dance he was braw,
O, young Jamie Foyers was the floo’er o’ them a’.

He came frae the shipyaird, took aff his working claes,
O, I mind that time weel in the lang simmer days;
He said, ‘Fare ye well, lassie, I’ll come back again.’
But young Jamie Foyers in battle was slain.

In the ficht for Belchite he was aye to the fore,
He focht at Gandesa till he couldna fecht more;
He lay owre his machine-gun wi’ a bullet in his brain
And young Jamie Foyers in battle was slain.

Ewan MacColl