Cox's Farm (Swansea Jail)

My uncle kept a public house,
The Glamorgan Arms so neat,
It stood just off the Mumbles Road
At the bottom of Argyle Street.

Ans when I was a little boy
My Uncle Will so kind
Would show me the walls of Swansea Jail,
So high and huge and blind.

That's where the wicked people go
To save us all from harm,
So watch your step in life, my lad,
Don't end in Cox's Farm.

It is no rural resiedence
But a place of dismal fame,
No flocks they keep, no crops they reap,
Its harvest is of shame.

The gasworks stink and the buffers clink
As the shunting trucks go by
And each man stares through prison bars
At a scrap of Sandfields sky.

But the Tree of Liberty shall grow
From that dark and bitter earth
For patriots bold its high walls hold
In the pangs of a nation's birth.

Here's a health to allwho've made a stand
To keep our land from harm
And served their spell in a prison cell
And dwelt in Cox's Farm.


Harri Webb