Lyrics
The first and last time I met her
We was children seven years by
She held my hand so softly
She was perfectly shy
My family went to wander
Six years in foreign lands
I returned home last evening
To take her by my hand
Long about break of morning
I met with my girl
she looked at me with crossed eyes
So I sent her from this world
I cracked her with my shovel
She bent my shovel's plane
She still had them crossed eyes
As I dug her crooked grave
This is how it's always been
This is how we do things in the country
Long the next morning
The rains they came down
Washed away that crooked grave
Washed her straight into town
She nudged against Judge Henry
She looked at him with cocked eyes
Judge Henry, he's as thick as the best built dam
But even he knew she'd passed on by
Long late that evening
I sought her kin folk out
I asked to sing at her funeral
They said, "Son we'd be proud"
My song it began to bend and break
As the box went in the ground
They dug her a brand new hole
With walls straight up and down
x2
Late in the dark time
I went creeping round the town
Into every pineboard shed
All their tools I did found
I put them in my vice grip
Turned them to the left and right
Returned them to their tool sheds
Straightened out this town with might
Now when they hoe a garden
Everything angles to the northeast
When they raise a new building
It leans askew and lord does it creak
Now when they shape the new tools
From the ones he's made unstraight
See every which way think they cross it up
Lord these crooked graves they will be our fate.
x4
