The Decemberists - The Mariner's Revenge Song lyrics

We are two mariners
Our ships' sole survivors
In this belly of a whale
Its ribs our ceiling beams
It's guts our 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 ohhhhh

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 ohhhhh

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 ohhhhh

"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"
Death rattle

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 ohhhhh

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 wanton cruelty
The following day
I shipped to sea with a privateer
And in the whistle of the
Wind I could almost hear oh ohhhhh

"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
As before us grew the angry
Jaws of a giant whale oh, oh (Screaming)
Oh (Screaming)

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 oh, oh