Rood

Lyrics

The assessor came with a book of names
And a measuring pole of ash
He laid it down on the winter ground
Where the broken puddles flash
He flipped it over to the hawthorn hedge
While my older brothers stood
He gave them the wide and rolling green
And left me in the mud

And it’s a long way down to the end of the row
When the width is all you've got
A 1/4 slice of a poor man’s prize
In a narrow, flinty plot
But the iron goes deep and the line stays straight
When you’ve got no room to bend
I’m working the fraction they left to me
Right to the bitter end

You can barely turn a heavy horse
Before you hit the boundary line
I keep my eyes on my own dark dirt
Working in the blind
My father walked the whole hillside
Before they wrote the law
Now the brass cap on the surveyor's stick
Divides the things he loved

And it’s a long way down to the end of the row
When the width is all you've got
A 1/4 slice of a poor man’s prize
In a narrow, flinty plot
But the iron goes deep and the line stays straight
When you’ve got no room to bend
I’m working the fraction they left to me
Right to the bitter end

They say a fair math makes a quiet town
Every claimant gets a piece
But a wooden stick doesn't pull the root
Or watch the mustard weed
It just cuts the world into little strips
So the clerks can sleep at night
And leaves a man in a narrow trench
Holding the reins too tight

My shoulders know exactly how far to swing
Before I hit the neighbor’s rye
I don’t need the ash pole anymore
To tell me where I lie
Just a narrow cut in the falling sun
Just a fraction of the earth
It’s a 1/4 of nothing, I know it is
But I’m reaping the dirt
Yeah, I'm reaping the dirt