Then there’s a nursery rhyme/song about a clock stopping but all I can recall are the lines ‘ninety years without slumbering; tick-tock, tick-tock’ and ‘but the clock stopped, never to go again, when the ollllllld maaaan died’
I immediately recognised "My Grandfather's clock" as we hag a '78 disc of it in my youth so searched it:-
My Grandfather's Clock" is a song written in 1876 by Henry Clay Work, the author of "Marching Through Georgia".
My grandfather's clock was too large for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor;
It was taller by half than the old man himself,
Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born,
And was always his treasure and pride;
But it stopp'd short — never to go again —
When the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering
(tick, tick, tick, tick),
His life seconds numbering,
(tick, tick, tick, tick),
It stopp'd short — never to go again —
When the old man died.
In watching its pendulum swing to and fro,
Many hours had he spent while a boy.
And in childhood and manhood the clock seemed to know
And to share both his grief and his joy.
For it struck twenty-four when he entered at the door,
With a blooming and beautiful bride;
But it stopp'd short — never to go again —
When the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering
(tick, tick, tick, tick),
His life seconds numbering,
(tick, tick, tick, tick),
It stopp'd short — never to go again —
When the old man died.
My grandfather said that of those he could hire,
Not a servant so faithful he found;
For it wasted no time, and had but one desire —
At the close of each week to be wound.
And it kept in its place —
not a frown upon its face,
And its hands never hung by its side.
But it stopp'd short — never to go again —
When the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering
(tick, tick, tick, tick),
His life seconds numbering,
(tick, tick, tick, tick),
It stopp'd short — never to go again —
When the old man died.
It rang an alarm in the dead of the night —
An alarm that for years had been dumb;
And we knew that his spirit was pluming for flight —
That his hour of departure had come.
Still the clock kept the time,
with a soft and muffled chime,
As we silently stood by his side;
But it stopp'd short — never to go again —
When the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering
(tick, tick, tick, tick),
His life seconds numbering,
(tick, tick, tick, tick),
It stopp'd short — never to go again —
When the old man died.
Which is one more verse than I remembered
Mind, I didn't enen know it was American - and drfinitely didn't know Johnny Cash had recorded a version.
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