Sunday 30 May 2010
Tune of the Day: Grandfather's Clock
by Henry C. Work
Henry Clay Work's 1876 song “Grandfather's Clock” is indisputably the greatest of furniture songs. It has become a standard of British brass bands, and is also popular in bluegrass music. It is apparently because of this song that longcase floor clocks are called “grandfather clocks”.
My grandfather's clock was to large for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor;
It was taller by half than the old man himself,
Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born,
And was always his treasure and pride.
But it stopped short, never to go again,
When the old man died.