The Folk Show Treasure Hunt Song #3

Track 3 "The Curse of a Dead Man’s Eye"

Tuesday 18th August  7pm

On Liz Franklin’s Folkal Point / Radio Teesdale

Online live link: http://radioteesdale.co.uk

The Team:

Ange Hardy (vocals)
Steve Knightley (vocals)
Lukas Drinkwater (double bass & vocals)
Steve Pledger (vocals)
Jo May (rope tension snare drum)
Archie Churchill-Moss (diatonic accordion)
David Milton (poetry reading & vocals)

The Song:

I could have written an entire album based on just the Ancient Mariner! There was one section that I felt most drawn to: the dark drone of those horrific nights at sea. The gruesome imagery of being reduced to the desperate state of drinking your own blood just to quench your thirst enough to cry out loud, is the stuff of nightmares - and folk songs.

David Milton, who reads perhaps the most famous verses from the Rime of The Ancient Mariner in this song, is the town crier for the small town of Watchet. Watchet harbour was allegedly the inspiration for the poem.

This song draws heavily on the original text, and the second part of the chorus is word-for-word from the original poem.

The Lyrics:

Four times fifty men did lie

With heavy thump nor groan nor sigh, 
I can’t look away Lord knows I’ve tried 
From the curse of a dead man’s eye.

All in a hot and a copper sky

Parched only dust in my lungs so dry,

I drink of the blood from my arms to cry 
of the curse of a dead man’s eye.

All at my feet did the dead men lie
Lay like a load on my weary eye, 
Alone all alone yet I could not die 
for the curse of a dead man’s eye.

The many men, so beautiful!

And they all dead did lie:

And a thousand thousand slimy things 
Lived on; and so did I.

All but the dead men rot and blight

The rotting flesh did reek awry,

And all but the souls of the dead men lie 
for the curse of a dead man’s eye.

All at my feet did the dead men lie 
Lay like a load on my weary eye, 
Alone, all alone, yet I could not die 
for the curse of a dead man’s eye.

The many men, so beautiful!

And they all dead did lie:

And a thousand thousand slimy things 
Lived on; and so did I.

Four times fifty men did lie

With heavy thump nor groan nor sigh, 
I can’t look away Lord knows I’ve tried 
from the curse of a dead man’s eye.

Notes From Coleridge: 

Day after day, day after day
We stuck, nor breath nor motion 
As idle as a painted ship
upon a painted ocean

Water, Water, every where
And all the boards did shrink 
Water, Water, every where

Nor any drop to drink…

I looked upon the rotting sea,

And drew my eyes away;

I looked upon the rotting deck,

And there the dead men lay.

I closed my lids, and kept them close, 
And the balls like pulses beat;

For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky

Lay dead like a load on my weary eye, And the dead were at my feet.

The cold sweat melted from their limbs, Nor rot nor reek did they:

The look with which they looked on me Had never passed away…

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful!

And they all dead did lie:

And a thousand thousand slimy things 
Lived on; and so did I.


- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner