LAW AND ORDER

A RUSTLERS LAMENT

By Frances Harris

I sit in this place inside these brick walls,

A small high-up window with five big steel bars,

My feet are in shackles, they clink when I walk,

How did it come to this, nobody cares,

First I was born of good Irish stock,

My father a convict, my mother a saint,

Life on the farm was hard work and toil,

My brothers and me, we did what we could,

It started quite small, when I lifted a pig,

My father had shown me to cover my tracks,

He boiled it down and disposed of the skin,

The family ate hearty, my mother ate bread,

Old father Flannigan came to the house.

He said he’d heard rumours floating about,

My father looked worried, my mother she cried,

Someone had stolen old Micks fattened pig,

He told us that Mick had a sick crippled wife,

Needing the pig to sustain her poor life,

If anyone hears the fate of the pig,

Flannigan asked us to tell him post haste,

When Flannigan left he glared at my dad,

When the priest left the house, my father he flared,

He picked up the strap and walloped my hide,

Unable to sit, not able to ride,

When the old man calmed down, I asked him what for?

He said I had bungled and someone had seen,

The message confused me, I couldn’t decide,

When my father had said we should take what we need,

It was a bad start that led to the killing,

I’d like to go back and do the right thing,

I’d wallop my dad and teach him a lesson,

Then save my nine brothers from hell and the gallows.