Gordon Bok – Ledge-End Of The Fiddler (Guitar)

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Come all you hardy mariners who sail Penobscot Bay

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You know the granite monument that's visible by day

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At the entrance of the thoroughfare that feeds North Haven town

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It marks the ledge where long ago a young fiddling Tom was drowned

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Now Tom was a friend to one and all and a fiddler second to none

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And a sailor too, but most of all he loved his jug of rum

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And when the fire was in his bow and the mud was in his eye

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Folks would flock from field and farm to hear the fiddler's fingers fly

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Now the fiddler and Jim Brown set out on the thirty-first of May

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To play the dance in Rockland, thirteen miles across the bay

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With the wind southeast on the sunlit sea, their pinky skipped along

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Their hearts were full as the rising moon and the air was full of song

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Well, they jigged and reeled till the midnight hour and the dance was winding down

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Outside they heard the sou'west wind singing a different song

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But the boys were full and they must get home, so they up and hoisted sail

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Two drunks alone on the bay at night in a rising sou'west gale

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Well, the reach was fast to the mid-bay bell and the fog come closing 'round

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Two miles more and close aboard they heard the Drunkard sound

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So the half tide ledge off Stand In Point was all that barred their way

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From the homeward run through the thoroughfare in the dark before the day

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Well, the bow struck hard and it tossed them out on the seaweed covered stone

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And there they stood in the pounding spray, half drenched and all alone

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They yelled for help from the near-by point, they sang and cried and swore

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And the fiddler bowed one final reel, for he knew he'd sail no more

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All they found in the morning light was an empty case and bow

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And late that year they built their friends a monument in stone

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But still they say on moonlit nights in the early part of June

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You can hear in the fog the sound of the fiddler playing his lonesome tune