This Is How We Do Things In the Country

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