Three Sheets to Kishkiyya · Track 120 · middle

Raw Owl's Eggs

VOLUME V — the CURES, crawling back to life. The idiom and the song's title hook: "Raw Owl's Eggs". Its true history: Rome, 1st c. AD (Pliny the Elder) — raw owl's eggs to replenish after drunkenness; deliver it as a deadpan Pliny citation. Render this beat of the night as the band's affectionate, funny, celebratory tribute — the idiom itself is the chorus hook.

Lyrics

[Intro]
Quiet in the gallery, please.
Turn your texts to the ancients.

[Verse 1]
You're clutching your temples, a ruin of state
A monument crumbling right off of the page
The morning's a tyrant, the mattress a tomb
But medicine echoes from out of the room
We look to antiquity, seeking the cure
When all of the modern concoctions are poor.

[Chorus]
You need raw owl's eggs, my child
To render the suffering a little more mild
From the archives of Rome to this terrible bed
It is exactly what the naturalist penned
Swallow the darkness, ignore your own dread
The only prescription is raw owl's eggs.

[Verse 2]
Pliny the Elder, 1st century AD
Compiled the logic for wretches like we
He studied patricians collapsed in the street
With wine on the marble and lead in their knees
He knew that the nocturnal predator held
The secret to making a hangover melt.

[Chorus]
So take raw owl's eggs, my child
To render the suffering a little more mild
From the archives of Rome to this terrible bed
It is exactly what the naturalist penned
Swallow the darkness, ignore your own dread
The only prescription is raw owl's eggs.

[Bridge]
I know it sounds vicious, I know it sounds cold
A terrible texture that's centuries old
But look at you shivering, fragile and pale
We lean on the empire when aspirin fails.

[Outro]
Just one little shell to crack
To bring our most promising pupil back.
Raw owl's eggs.
Though I suppose a plate of hash browns might work instead.