I’ve been over Snowdon, I’ve slept up on Crowdon I’ve camped by the Wain Stones as well I’ve sunbathed on Kinder, been burned to a cinder And many more things I can tell My rucksack has oft been me pillow The heather has oft been my bed And sooner than part from the mountains I think I would rather be dead I’m a rambler, I’m a rambler from Manchester way I get all me pleasure the hard moorland way I may be a wage slave on Monday But I am a free man on Sunday The day was just ending as I was descending By Grimesbrook just by Upper Tor When a voice cried, “Hey you!” in the way keepers do He’d the worst face that ever I saw The things that he said were unpleasant In the teeth of his fury I said “Sooner than part from the mountains I think I would rather be dead” He called me a louse and said, “Think of the grouse” And I thought but I just couldn’t see How old Kinder Scout and the moors round about Couldn’t hold both the poor grouse and me He said, “All this land is my master’s” At that I stood shaking my head No man has the right to own mountains No more than the wide ocean bed I once loved a maid, a spot-welder by trade She was fair as the rowan in bloom And the blue of her eye matched the June moorland sky And I wooed her from April till June On the day that we should have been married I went for a ramble instead For sooner than part from the mountains I think I would rather be dead So I walk where I will, over mountain and hill And I’ll lie where the bracken is deep I belong to the mountains, the clear-running fountains Where the grey rocks rise rugged and steep I’ve seen the white hare in the gully And the curlew fly high overhead And sooner than part from the mountains I think I would rather be dead