The Gaselli Lyrics & Tabs by S. J. Tucker
The Gaselli
guitar chords lyrics
Sing, O sing of the graceful Gaselli!
Nimble and fleet are their boot-black feet and sweet are their whistling songs.
No shepherd more steadfast than we, no firefly so quick on the wing,
No melodies lighter, no lyrics brighter, than ours
Than ours -
On the sheep-spotted fields of home!
We are the bringers of grace, we are the players of the goat horn flutes.
We are the fire tenders in fields where hay has been bundled and wheeled.
But light up your camp and find us gathering near, stamping our hooves on the grassy ground, stamping our hooves to the beat of your drum, stamping our hooves to the sound of your wine sped violas.
But kindle a flame and see us creeping in from our sheep and our cattle, creeping in from our milk and our meat, creeping in from the dew and the damp and the pin wheeling, heart reeling ergo on the rye, the wheat, the golden, gleaming grain.
And if in the morning you find your wife has gone missing...
And if in the morning you find your brother run off...
If in the morning you find your number one or two less than the night before,
It is not our fault.
We are but animals and follow are bestial nature, as you do.
If in the morning you find your number one or two less than the night before,
It is not our fault.
We are but animals and follow are bestial nature, as you do.
As you do.
Else there would be no fires and no wine, no songs to thresh the mind, no whirling, no wheeling, no slaughtered sheep bleating.
And what would our lives be then?
Yes, we take one or two, but what do we give you but fire and wine and songs in the mind, and whirling and wheeling and lovely girls bleating?
We give as good as we take.
Yes, sing for the Gaselli.
These are my people and we are well sung.
We hunt the campfires in the low dells, and do we dance?
Do we sing sweeter than any twanging country harp?
Bet on it.
Are we lithesome and lithe, our faces fair?
Do we kiss like poets, imagine they do?
And are there one or two gone in the morning?
Bet on that, too.
By our green you shall knows.
Our green coats and our green skirts, trailing behind us so that only those who know to look will see our boot-black hooves agleaming.
And what befalls those lucky one or two, who in the damp ashen dawn are nowhere to be found?
All creatures under the stars must eat, my dears.
We are shepherds.
To eat the sheep we tend would be an abomination, would it not?
To eat cattle and goat would be obscene!
How could you even suggest it?
What perversion you've described!
Be off with you now else you shall feel my hoof!
But wait -
Perhaps there was a Gaselli with hungers like the ones you expound.
Perhaps there was one who did not like the taste of girl, even less that taste of wiry gypsy boy!
Perhaps he thought lamb and roasted cow smoky and rich and sweet, perhaps he thought goat salty and soft to his neat, white teeth.
Perhaps his name was Taglio.
And perhaps he stands before you.
