The Decemberists - The Mariner's Revenge Song Meaning

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Album cover for The Mariner's Revenge Song album cover

The Mariner's Revenge Song Lyrics

We are two mariners
Our ship's sole survivors
In this belly of a whale
Its ribs are ceiling beams
Its guts are carpeting
I guess we have some time to kill

You may not remember me
I was a child of three
And you, a lad of eighteen
But I...

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anonymous
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Apr 9th 2021 !⃝
It's about a boy who had a charming but despicable scapegrace of a father, that his mother thought she knew but he left her anyway,and that broke her heart and on her dying breath she told her son to enact revenge upon the awful man and he promised that he would give him the most painful and embarrassing death. And many years went by as the boy held on to that anger letting it consume him as he lost sight of everything else, he was poor but some church men took him in as a sailor, and one night he heard about a man he fit the description of his accursed father who was a sailor on a fishing boat i think, and he went with them and waited for the right moment to kill him the way his motherland him to, as he heard his mothers spirit seemingly reminding him the words she said upon her dying breath and that she loves him and is basically cheering him on. But when the boy thinks he has the right moment a giant whale destroys their boat and the whole crew dyed, all except for the boy and the crooked man. He remarked how lucky they were and how he's going to make the evil man suffer, just how his mother wanted.

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