Murheellisten laulujen maa [English translation]

He was born blameless

just by chance

up north in a land of wilderness

where his forefathers

drunk, no doubt

raised fists to their wives, their children

and beat them all about

The path of the common man

this boy didn’t want to cross

“I will never buy myself an axe,

and I’ll never touch the sauce.

If I do I’ll lose my house.”

Winter after winter, the snowbank calls

but he never wants to be like his father once was

Yet when no one is ready to offer a job

the stern hand of fate pours booze down his gob

resurrecting Ruinous Rob* and his ways

and a lord’s habits take the reins

spurring on all the while, to the liquor aisle

It drives a man to desperate ends,

when the cold claims all he tends

amidst the dead fields of rye*

peers a cold frozen eye

as the axe rises and falls

High on the rolling hills

deep from the soil

fathers proudly watch as their sons toil

Unemployment, booze, axe, domestic dispute;

Snowbank, police, third strike, ill-repute

This land of a thousand sorrowful songs,

that run into a thousand lakes and bogs

A rough-worn folk whose self-pity’s so vast,

by no means can it be contained or surpassed

In every song you're always all out of luck

and the gates of heaven stay firmly shut

for poor old Despairing Dave*