General’s Daughter

Lyrics

I fell in love with a general's daughter And ran away with her, far across the border Rolled in the heather where the wild-fox plays And our shadows moved like the rippling waves Told her I wanted to sing and to dance And we did but the soldiers that were sent for to search By her father who was angered by our display of nerve Were poking in the hill-side with bayonets sharp They'd just found our horses, and soon they would chance On the crushed, clutching grass, still warm from our hearts But, for me a noose and for my love to bear The cloak and the cross that the Carmelite nuns, do wear And we talked of love in the great blue yonder And we kissed the blue stones from the Druid's altar Rolled up in the yellow-heather gorse mountain range Her cries rise, tell me no lies, when she dies, like Shakespeare says Opium and whiskey give me wild flimsey whims Our first born would carry like the four-cornered winds Name he would wear like a tenth-century prince Ah, while smiling crazy that his life was a cinch Or a girl-child not given to those safe-lady whims Laughter wild graces that warm every inch But, for me a noose and for my love to bear The cloak and the cross that the Carmelite nuns, do wear