The mariner's revenge song

The Decemberists
Música y Letra: Colin Meloy


We are two mariners,
our ships' sole survivors,
in this belly of a whale.

Its ribs are ceiling beams,
its guts are carpeting,
I guess we have some time to kill.

You may not remember me,
I was a child of three,
and you a lad of eighteen.

But I remember you,
and I will relate to you
how our histories interweave.

At the time you were a rake and a roustabout,
spending all your money on the whores and hounds.
Oh, ooooh.

You had a charming air,
all cheap and debonair,
my widowed mother found so sweet.

And so she took you in,
her sheets still warm with him,
now filled with filth and foul disease.

As time wore on you proved a debt-ridden drunken mess,
leaving my mother a poor consumptive wretch.
Oh, oooooh.

And then you disappeared,
your gambling arrears,
the only thing you left behind.

And then the magistrate
reclaimed our small estate
and my poor mother lost her mind.

Then one day, in spring, my dear sweet mother died,
but before she did I took her hand as she, dying, cried...
Oh, oooooh.

"Find him, bind him, tie him to a pole
and break his fingers to splinters,
drag him to a hole until he wakes up, naked,
clawing at the ceiling of his grave."

It took me fifteen years
to swallow all my tears
among the urchins in the street.

Until a priory
took pity and hired me
to keep their vestry nice and neat.

But never once in the employ of these holy men
did I ever, once, turn my mind from the thought of revenge.
Oh, oooooh.

One night I overheard,
the prior exchanging words
with a penitent whaler from the sea.

The captain of his ship,
who matched you toe to tip,
was known for a wanton cruelty.

The following day I shipped to sea with a privateer.
And in the whistle of the wind I could almost hear...
Oh, oooooh.

"Find him, bind him, tie him to a pole
and break his fingers to splinters,
drag him to a hole until he wakes up, naked,
clawing at the ceiling of his grave."

"There is one thing I must say to you,
as you sail across the sea.
Always, your mother will watch over you
as you avenge this wicked deed."

And then that fateful night
we had you in our sight,
after twenty months at sea.

Your starboard flank abeam,
I was getting my muskets clean
when came this rumbling from beneath.

The ocean shook,
the sky went black
and the captain quailed.

And before us grew,
the angry jaws
of a giant whale.

Oh, ooooooooooh.
Oooooh.

Don't know how I survived.
The crew all was chewed alive.
I must have slipped between his teeth.

But, oh, what providence!
What divine intelligence!
That you should survive as well as me.

It gives my heart great joy
to see your eyes fill with fear.

So lean in close and I will whisper
the last words you'll hear
Ooh, ooooh.