#----------------------------------PLEASE NOTE---------------------------------#
#This file is the author's own work and represents their interpretation of the #
#song. You may only use this file for private study, scholarship, or research. #
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This file is for personal private use only.  All copyright laws apply.
-transcribed by Greg Steele - 
gsteele@steelerubber.com - 73522.2331@compuserve.com


"Forefathers" - Dan Fogelberg 1990  

Intro: alternate D and G/B (x20033 or x20030). You can play around with
those two chords between verses as well...

D                               Bm
They came from Scandinavia, the land of midnight sun

    D                                    Bm
And crossed the North Atlantic when this century was young

       G
They'd heard that in America every man was free

                                     A               D
To live the way he chose to live and be who he could be


Some of them were farmers there 
And tilled the frozen soil
But all they got was poverty 
From all their earnest toil
They say one was a sailor 
Who sailed the wide world round
Made home port - got drunk one night
Walked off the pier and drowned

(The rest of the verses add two beats in the last lines where the A chord is) 

My mother was of Scottish blood
It's there that she was born
They brought her to America in 1924
They left behind the highlands
And the heather-covered hills
And came to find America
With broad, expectant dreams and iron wills

My grandad worked the steel mills
Of central Illinois
His daughter was his jewel
His son was just his boy
For thirty years he worked the mills
And stoked the coke-fed fires
And looked toward the day 
When he'd at last be 65 and could retire

<Chorus>
        F#m  
And the sons become the fathers

        Bm
And the daughters will be wives

       G            
As the torch is passed from hand to hand

       D                    A
And we struggle through our lives

           F#m
Though the generations wander

    Bm            A
The lineage survives

    G 
And all of us from dust to dust
   
   A                                D  G/B  D  G/B
We all become forefathers by and by


The woman and the man were wed
Just after the war
And they settled in this river town
And three fine sons they bore
One became a lawyer, and one fine pictures drew
And one became this lonely soul who sits here now
And sings this song to you

<repeat chorus>