The Wind
Was was a torrent of darkness
Among the gusty trees
The moon was a ghostly galleon
Tossed upon cloudy seas
The road was a rhythm of moonlight
over the purple moon
On a highway, man, I come a -ridin',
ridin' up to the old inn door
Over the cobbles,
he clatters
and crashes into the dark inn yard
He taps with his whip on the shutters,
but all is locked and barred
He whistles a tune to the window,
and who should be waiting there?
Be st, the landlord's daughter,
the landlord's black -eyed daughter
Clapping a dark red love -knot
into her long black hair
One kiss, my bunny sweetheart,
I'm after a prize tonight
I'll be back with a yellow gold
before the morning light
But if they press me sharply
and carry me through the day
I'll come to thee by moonlight,
your hell should bob away
Out were the tawny sunset,
over the fertile moor
King George's men came marching,
marching up to the holding door
They grabbed the landlord's daughter
and bound her to the foot of the bed
Two of them knelt at her casement
with muskets at their side
Our best could see through her window,
the rolls out of here
would arise.
Well, they bound her up to attention
With many a sniggering jest
They bound a musket beside her
With a muzzle at her breast
Now Keith did watch and they kissed her
She heard her dead man say
He said, watch for me by the moonlight
For hell shall bar the way
She wretched her hands behind her
But all her knots held good
She wretched her hands till her fingers
Were wet with sweat or blood
She wretched and she
writhed in the moonlight
And the hours crawled by like years
Till now on the stroke of midnight,
told on the stroke of midnight,
the tip of one finger touched it,
the trigger at least was heard.
Trot -lot in the frosty silence
Trot -lot in the echoing night
Nearer, he came and nearer,
her face was like a knight,
her eyes grew wide for a moment,
she took one last deep breath,
when her finger moved in the moonlight,
her musket shattered the moonlight,
shattered her breasts in the moonlight,
and warned him with her death.
He turned, he spurred to the west,
he did not know who stood.
Bowed with her head o 'er the musket
and drenched with her own blood.
Not till dawn he heard it,
and his face grew grey to hear,
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
the landlord's black -eyed daughter,
Had waited for her love in the moonlight
and died in the darkness there.
Back he spurted like a madman,
shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him,
and his rapier brandished high.
Blood red were his spurs
in the golden noon,
wine red was his velvet coat.
When they shot him down
on the highway,
down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway,
with a bunch of lace at his throat.
John Otway 
