Song picture
The Musical Box (A Christmas Ghost Story)
Like
Playlist
Comment Share
Free download
The 13th track from the album 'A Present From Christmas Past'
pop rock folk country christmas chris paul bouzouki frettedfriends
Artist picture
Difficult to classify. Possibly folk, country, rock, pop...who knows?
Tobe A. Richards: Vocals, guitar, keyboards, mandolin, bass, bouzouki, cittern, cuatro, percussion etc. Chris Richards; Vocals Guests: Paul S. Baker: Vocals, keyboards, guitar, bass, autoharp, percussion etc.
Song Info
Genre
Rock • Folk Rock
Charts
#1,344 in subgenre Peak #30
Charts
Peak #261
Author
Music: P.Baker, P.McGrath, Lyrics: T.Richards
Rights
Transongs 2006
Uploaded
April 09, 2006
Track Files
MP3
MP3 7.7 MB • 128 kbps • 8:25
Story behind the song
I received an instrumental track from my old Transit Band songwriting partner, Paul Baker just before Christmas of 2004. It had the working title of Boscastle Marshall after a military looking gentleman Paul came across on a visit to Boscastle in Cornwall. For some reason its haunting quality seemed to remind me of Victorian ghost stories such as Henry James' Turn of the Screw. This in turn led me to embark on the eight and a half minute saga featured on the album. Lyrically it was probably the most challenging thing I'd written, as the narrative had to be entertaining, consistant and with a poetic rhyming quality reflecting the style of the Victorian period. Additional music is provided by Paul McGrath and further musical interpretation by me, including the musical box refrain at the very end.
Lyrics
The bough will break with the weight of the snow The world will awake but my spirit will know Six Winters have passed since he captured my heart Where to begin? I'll go back to the start Was the berry as white and as pale as his skin The blue of his eyes sent me into a spin The black of his coat and the green of my gown As we moved through the town We met and we married 'fore Winter had done Two lives had been woven and stitched into one Out by the lake took a walk Christmas Eve He decided to stay but I just had to leave The haze of the sun caught the gleam on the ice I remember unusually looking back twice Heard the flapping of wings like a clarion call Then then there was nothing at all I turned and ran 'Cross the white of the land Twixt future and fate It was early but I was too late The lake had froze over like a rink to the lost And the chill of December had welcomed Jack Frost A curlew flew up from the bed of the reeds His body lay wrapped in the arms of the weeds Where once was a wedding there now was a wake The sound of his laughter replaced by an ache The Christmas gifts lay there still wrapped by the tree A constant reminder 'til January The sound of his humming spun round in my head The last words we'd spoken the last thing he'd said I'll love you forever as I love you today Then our time slipped away The music box sat closed and locked in the hall The key long since lost from the wedding last Fall A gift of my love, a piece of my heart Falling silent and still like two lovers apart Every room in the house held the echo of death The lingering cologne and the chill of my breath The fragments of life like the hair on his comb Left a house not a home The clocks left unwound From the day that he drowned Frozen in time Standing silent, unable to chime Nursing a heart that now hung by a thread It was New Year's Eve night and I took to my bed Somewhere between consciousness and half asleep My body unsettled, bedclothes in a heap I swear I felt the cold of a hand brush my face As a shadowy outline moved by the bookcase Was it only a dream somewhere in the halflight Or a trick of the night I rose from the bed, groped my way down the stairs And I'm truly not someone who easily scares But a chill ran right through me, when a sound from the hall Stopped me dead in my tracks, had the past come to call The snowglobe lay broken and smashed by the fire With the flames in the hearth leaping higher and higher And there on the floor was the key that unlocks The musical box The way that he lived and the way that he died So hard to forget, lord knows how I've tried But every Christmas and New Year's the same The ghosts of the past haunt my heart and my brain But I'm wondering whether the state of my mind And the time of the season have somehow combined To shake my reality down to the bone When I'm here all alone The longing and loss His grave and the moss With the ivy entwined Turn over a stone and you'll find The past and the present have blurred into one The web of our lives oh so cruelly spun But I still see him now as I held him back then Remembering the cold and the where and the when The berry was white and as pale as his skin The blue of his eyes sent me into a spin The hands turning midnight with the chime of the clocks And the musical box
On Playlists
Comments
Please sign up or log in to post a comment.