> Nic Jones > Songs > Ruins by the Shore

Ruins by the Shore

[Nic Jones]

Nic Jones sang his own composition on his 1988 anthology of live performances recorded between 1979 and 1982, In Search of Nic Jones. The sleeve notes do not mention the recording date and place for this song but he commented:

Somewhere in Brittany there is a ruin rising up above the shore where we spend a day during on of our camping holidays. As I watched Helen investigating hidden places among the stones trying to find spiders with which to scare the wits out of Joe, I was reminded of a scene in the film The Planet of the Apes, when Charles Heston finds the torch of the Statue of Liberty sticking out of the sand. The thoughts and the image stuck.

The Demon Barbers sang Ruins by the Shore in 2002 on their CD Uncut.

Jon Boden sang Ruins by the Shore as the January 13, 2011 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day.

Lyrics

Sometime between ice ages was that they first appeared,
Fell hungry on the beasts and fish they speared.

Chorus (after each verse but the last):

But all their bones are blackened
And their faces are no more
As we walk among the ruins by the shore

They worshipped gods and thought they'd never die,
But now the spiders nest the tombs wherein they lie.

They dreamed of golden cities raised into the air,
But greed drew their simple hearts into its snare.

Kings, tyrants and their empires on the Earth held sway,
Their belief in science took their souls away.

We search the heavens and the silent skies,
Hoping that light will fall on blinded eyes.

Chorus:

But all our bones will blacken
And our faces be no more
As we lay among the ruins by the shore,
As we lay among the ruins by the shore.