THE LIBRARY · THE VALE

The Cantor's Daughter (a taproom song)

The drinking-song they bang the tables to in Ahnassi's taproom — about a Sealed Choir cantor's girl who out-sang her father's whole grim choir and ran off down the road with a Finder and a wink. The Vale's cheerful way of mocking the people who'd sing the whole world quiet.

(Sung loud, with the cups for a drum. Everyone knows the last line of each verse.) Old Cantor Vell could seal a ghost with one long iron oath, but he could not, for all his throat, keep one girl's song afloat — AND SHE SANG! louder than the choir, she sang the candles higher, she sang her father off to bed and danced the taproom 'til it's red! They came to bind her, six in grey, to hush her like the dead. She poured them ale, she learned their names, she sang them daft instead — AND THEY SANG! the dread Sealed Choir, they sang of beer and not of pyre, they woke up merry, woke up kind, and left their writ of sealing signed... to ME, for the round! A Finder caught her eye one night — all wink and empty purse. She traded him a kiss for nowt and called it 'trade, or worse' — AND THEY'RE GONE! down the laughing road, no banner and no load, and somewhere yet she's singing free the one laugh nobody can seal: TEE-HEE! (Now buy Ahnassi a drink, you've sung her custom up.)

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