Beeswing               (Richard Thompson)     

I was just 19 when I came to town, they called it 'the summer of love',

They were burning babies burning flags, the hawks against the doves.

I took a job in the steamie, down in Cauldrum Street

And I fell in love with a laundry girl, who was working next to me

Refrain

Well she was a rare thing, fine as a bees wing,

So fine a breath of wind might blow her away.

She was a lost child but she was running wild

She said “as long as there’s no price on love I’ll stay,

And you wouldn’t want me any other way”.

Brown zigzag hair around her face and a look of half surprise,

Like a fox caught in the headlight, there was animal in her eyes.

She said “Oh man now can’t you see, I’m not the factory kind,

If you don’t get me out of here, I’ll surely lose my mind.

She was a rare thing, fine as a bees wing

So fine that I might crush her where she lay,

She was a lost child ...

We busked around the market towns, and picked fruit down in Kent

And we could tinker lamps and pots, and knives wherever we went

And I said that we might settle down, get a few acres dug,

Fire a-burning in the hearth, and babies on the rug.

She said “Oh man you foolish man, that surely sounds like hell,

You might be lord of half the world, you’ll not own me as well”

Refrain

We was camping down in the Gower one time, the work was pretty good,

She thought that we shouldn’t wait for the frost, I thought maybe we should

We was drinking more in those days, and tempers reached a pitch,

And like a fool I let her run, with her ramblin’ itch

Refrain

Well the last I heard she was sleeping rough, down on the Derby beat

White Horse︎ in her hip pocket and a wolfhound at her feet.

And they say she even married once, a man named Romany Brown

But even a gipsy caravan was too much setting down

And they say her flower is faded now; hard weather and hard booze.

But maybe that’s the price you pay, for the chains you refuse.

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bees wing

And I miss her more than ever words can say

If I could just taste, some of her wildness now

If I could hold her in my arms today,

Well I wouldn’t want her any other way.

Notes

• "The summer of love" - 1967, when thousands of young people - "hippies"- gathered near San Francisco to celebrate peace, love, music, and alternative lifestyles.

• burning babies is not meant literally, but that societal norms were being ignored

• White Horse - a brand of Scotch Whisky

• Gower - a region in South Wales