Short Ballad For A Long Man

Gm C As a young man I was never one for sitting still at school Gm C When I went to London town I was paid to play the fool Eb B From Canary Wharf to Skibbereen to Timbuktu and back again Eb B You know they’re queuing round the block to see me Gm C Seems everybody has a price alive or in the dirt Gm C A hundred pounds and thirty more that’s what I was worth Eb B Keep your knives away from me, give my body to the sea Eb B I don’t care if there’s no one there to see me F Eb C Gm C I paid a fisherman to throw me overboard, but my dying wish it was ignored Gm C Stole my body and boiled it to the bone Gm C Strung me up all bones and teeth, a sign there read underneath Gm C Here stands Charles Byrne from the county of Tyrone Eb B So come on marvel at my size, damn your bone and damn your eyes Eb B They’re queuing round the block to see me F Eb C Gm C So welcome to my house, it’s a museum for the obscene Pawnshop from hell it’s like Halloween, Gm C me and Mr. Jackson talk long into the night Gm C Jackson was a hunchback he died and was brought back, To live out his days, before the inscrutable gaze Gm C Of ten thousand strangers naked as I am tall Eb B Should Icarus not have learned to fly lest he be burned by the sky Eb B Queuing round the block to see me Eb C From Canary Wharf to Skibbereen to Timbuktu and back again Eb C You know they’re queuing round the block to see me F Eb C