My Grandfather's Clock

My Grandfather's Clock is a song written in 1876 by Henry Clay Work. The song is sung from the point of view of a grandson, telling about his grandfather.

On the day of his grandfather's birth, his family purchases a longcase clock. The clock works perfectly for 90 years, requiring only that it be wound once a week.

Yet the clock seemed to have a mind of its own: it rang 24 times when his grandfather brought his new bride into his house, and near the man's death let out an eerie sound alerting the family that he would soon die. Upon his death, the clock stops working, and despite all efforts would not work again.

Work wrote a sequel to the song two years later (also from the grandson's point of view): the non-functioning clock was sold to a junk dealer who sold the parts for scrap and the case for kindling and was replaced by a wall clock (which the grandson called "that vain, stuck-up thing on the wall"). The sequel never reached the popularity of the original.

One of the lines in the chorus ("Ninety Years Without Slumbering") would become the title for Episode #132 of the television series The Twilight Zone.