Three Sheets to Kishkiyya · Track 81 · middle

Ale Passion

VOLUME IV — the HUNGOVER morning after. The idiom and the song's title hook: "Ale Passion". Its true history: England, c.1593 — 'passion' in the old sense of painful affliction; the Elizabethan 'pain in the pate'; a mock-scholarly lecture. Render this beat of the night as the band's affectionate, funny, celebratory tribute — the idiom itself is the chorus hook.

Lyrics

[Intro]
Turn your ledgers, if you please, to the year 1593.
Observe the subject in her tangled sheet.
A magnificent agony, quite complete.

[Verse 1]
In the fading twilight of the Tudor reign,
they had a rather gorgeous title for the pain.
Before romance took the word entirely,
a passion was an affliction, borne quietly.
It was the martyr's trial, the heavy weight,
what the apothecaries diagnosed as pain in the pate.
And looking at our hero clutching her brow,
I am pleased to say she is historical now.

[Chorus]
She is gripped by the Ale Passion!
A textbook case in the Elizabethan fashion.
It is no common thunder that makes her groan,
she is weathering a malady of the throne.
Oh, the Ale Passion, majestic and severe,
the noble consequence of the tavern cheer.

[Verse 2]
Observe how she shields her eyes from the sun,
like a tragic actor when the comedy is done.
Old Pliny wrote of owl eggs to cure the morning head,
but she has claimed the grand asylum of her bed.
The humors are unbalanced, the pulse is a drum,
a testament to exactly where she has come from.
To ache so grandly, one must first be brave,
riding the crest of a very foolish wave.

[Chorus]
She is gripped by the Ale Passion!
A textbook case in the Elizabethan fashion.
It is no common thunder that makes her groan,
she is weathering a malady of the throne.
Oh, the Ale Passion, majestic and severe,
the noble consequence of the tavern cheer.

[Outro]
So draw the heavy curtains on the scholar's room.
Let her steep in her remarkable gloom.
The Ale Passion. 1593.
Just close your eyes... I will shut the door.