McKeon's Coming
© 1985 Gordon Bok , BMI
The story goes that McKeon was a fisherman from Canada. Had a little schooner; ran it with his son or another man. Back during Prohibition, the lucrative trade of smuggling booze into the States attracted many people, and McKeon was one. Unfortunately, he got caught, his schooner was impounded and sold at auction, and he was thrown in jail in Massachusetts. When he got out years later, his health was ruined, and it took him almost two years to work his way back home.
Now when the wind is bright with the spring and the snow has gone away
The days grow long and the time has come to hoist my sail and go
And I'll hear no more your dungeon door, nor eat your bitter beans
Surely it's a long and a hungry road 'til McKeon's home again.
I'll go down by the Naskeag sound where the tide runs fast and strong
The water's deep and the hills are steep and the nights are cold and long,
And through the rocks of Jericho I'll wind my weary way
And roll her off for Sable, aye, and the grey seals of Fundy.
For the wind is fair and the tide's at the spring and the time has come to go
Hoist my sail on a Northern wind and I'll be on my way.
Ah, but there's no one to go with me and there's no one at my side
Surely it's a long and a lonely road for the Straits of Canso.
McKeon's Coming is recorded on the album North Winds Clearing, the Bok, Muir, & Trickett album First Fifteen Years Vol II, and is also in the songbook One to Sing, One to Haul.