The Decemberists – The Mariners Revenge Song (Guitar)

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We are two mariners, our ships' sole survivors

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In this belly of a whale

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Its ribs our ceiling beams, its guts our carpeting

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I guess we have some time to kill

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You may not remember me, I was a child of three

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And you a lad of eighteen

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But I remember you and I will relay to you

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How our histories interweave

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At the time you were a rake and a roustabout

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Spending all your money on the whores and hounds, oh

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You had a charming air, all cheap and debonair

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My widowed mother found so sweet

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And so she took you in, her sheets still warm with him

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Now filled with filth and foul disease

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As time wore on you proved a debt-ridden drunken mess

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Leaving my mother a poor consumptive wretch, oh

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And then you disappeared, your gambling arrears

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The only thing you left behind

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And then the magistrate reclaimed our small estate

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And my poor mother lost her mind

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Then one day in spring my dear sweet mother died

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But before she did I took her hand as she dying cried, oh

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"Find him, bind him

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Fingers to splinters

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Wakes up naked

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Clawing at the ceiling of his grave"

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It took me fifteen years to swallow all my tears

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Among the urchins in the street

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Until a priory took pity and hired me

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To keep their vestry nice and neat

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But never once in the employ of these holy men

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Did I ever once turn my mind from the thought of revenge, oh

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One night I overheard the prior exhanging words

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With a penitent whaler from the sea

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The captain of his ship who matched you toe to tip

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Was known for wanton cruelty

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The following day I shipped to sea with a privateer

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And in the whistle of the wind I could almost hear, oh

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"Find him, bind him

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Fingers to splinters

Dm
Wakes up naked

                              E      F E
Clawing at the ceiling of his grave

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  There is one thing I must say to you

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  As you sail across the sea

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   Always your mother will watch over you

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  As you avenge this wicked deed"

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And then that fateful night we had you in our sight

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After twenty months at sea

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Your starboard flank a beam, I was getting my muskets clean

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when came this rumbling from beneath

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The ocean shook, the sky went black and the captain quailed

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And before us grew the angry jaws of a giant whale, oh

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Don't know how I survived, the crew all was chewed alive

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I must have slipped between his teeth

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But oh, what providence, what divine intelligence

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That you should survive as well as me

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It gives my heart great joy to see your eyes fill with fear

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So lean in close and I will whisper the last words you'll hear, oh