The Beating Barrel by Guy Barde

The eleventh hour comes this evening, where’s our honored despot? Beckon him come hither, I am in the courtyard with guillotine and rusted metal spear-

The clouds this morning dark, like this bloody wretched day: Hear the children sing in rounds as they begin to play.

“We don’t know where we’re going / we don’t know where we’re from / but the bearded man with candies has drunk up all our rum / we think that you can find him in his hammock or the quay / the ship has long since left the dock we’re all drifting everyway.”

Your servants said you’d runaway, gone before we’d come.

So we drank your wine and hawked your jewels and set your house a flame.

I watched the shingles spark and flare as I tried to forget your name then the children started dancing circles and in the darkness sang.

“We don’t know where we’re going / we don’t know where is home / if you think you know my father then tell him that I’ve grown / my mother she is dead and we know we’ll die alone / bless our bloody monarch and the bones beneath his throne.”

News from along the coast came that very day: Eight horses with a royal coach were racing through the rain.

A man was there and saw you, his silence you tried to pay. But you’d taxed his family to starving so he spit and turned away.

It was there that we found you on the docks by the bay. You were hiding in a pickle barrel near a bullock on the quay. The men all gathered round and I heard you start to pray but a butt-stock found your mouth and then I lost you in the fray.

I hear the children in the streets singing everyday about your violent ending in the barrel on that bloody awful day. They’ve written a brand new rhyme for a very different game and I’ve heard it’s called the Beating-Barrel: Where the wicked come to pray.

“We don’t know where we are / but we’ve finally found a home / smash the barrel hard dear boys shatter those pretty bones / tear it’s flesh and burn it’s clothes don’t ever say it’s name / the worst is over now my girls the monsters lost the game.”