The Singing Bone

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a lone fiddle and a bowed saw, a murder-ballad in the cold)

[Verse 1]
The king said whoever kills the boar may marry the crown,
so two brothers went to the black woods where the tusker ran them down.
The younger one, the gentle one, he faced it without fear —
and he brought the beast home over his back... and his brother met him here.

[Chorus]
On the bridge in the dark the elder struck, for the glory and the bride,
buried the boy in the river-sand where the current ran him wide.
"Dead men tell no stories" — oh, but that's the oldest lie:
the body keeps the score in the ground, and the ground will testify.

[Verse 2]
Years on, a shepherd found a bone bleached white beneath the foam,
carved it to a mouthpiece just to pipe his flock back home —
but the bone had its own song to sing, and it sang it clear and true:
"my brother's hand, my brother's blade, the crown he thought he knew."

[Bridge]
(the fiddle keens)
What the tongue can't say, the marrow will — the truth outlasts the man;
they wove the killer in a sack and drowned him where he began.

[Outro]
So carve no flute from a stranger's bone unless you'd hear it all...
the dead don't rest, they just learn the wind, and they wait for a mouth to call.