The Miller’s Daughter
She wore a red dress when everyone wore black. No one ever liked a women with her own mind, who made decisions for herself and shared her opinions freely. To everyone’s horror, she decided not to get married before she was 21. She knew how to swim and she travelled on boats and knew two languages other than her own. They drowned her when she was 19. Clearly, she was a witch.
She wore a red dress when everyone wore black
painted spells over every hungry eye
many tried in vain, and all but one did fail
for one indiscretion she would die
The miller’s daughter she was a witch they say
on the devil’s playground she would play
he took her voice her hair the red dress she would wear
cause you cannot be so free that way
The Reverend’s Daughter
She had trousers on and her hair in a handkerchief. She rubbed lanolin and shea into the cracks on her fingers. She tried to remember what her hands looked like before the war. Tried to remember what her home had looked like before, or her husband’s face. His face as it used to be. He would arrive home soon, most of his face a tangle of scars, his left eyelid limp and closed, while he waited for the glass that would eventually fill the hole. Her hands shook as she thought about the trip she must make tonight. The doctor was a good one, his office clean, but supplies were short and the procedure illegal. She knew this would have been her last child, but it was not his. Leaving him now was not an option, someone had to take care of him.
I can have anyone but not the one I love
what can I do to turn the hand of fate
Won’t turn my back on my commitments made in life
but the evidence of love can’t survive
The reverend’s daughter she was a witch they say
on the devils playground she did play
twas no surprise that he took her life away
cause you cannot be so free that way
The Farmer’s Daughter
She did not want to open her eyes, though she knew her father would be in soon to wake her up and bring her some warm . Maybe if she did not open her eyes, her dream could continue. That dream in which she was not covered in black and blue, her hair did not have blood in it and she did not hurt, so much, down there. Her mother put her to bed last night after her bath. The water had stung. She didn’t have the strength to cry out. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as when those men had done these things to her. She heard her father’s truck in the driveway and she held tighter the stuffed bunny he’d given her for Christmas. He hadn’t come in to tuck her in and kiss her goodnight last night either. She realized he didn’t want to see her. Her eyes were still shut but she knew she was not dreaming anymore.
I’m scared to go outside, I used to all the time
Used to play w/ all the children up the lane
It must be my fault, my father thinks it’s true
I’ll have to be more careful what I do
The famer’s daughter, she was a witch they say
On the devil’s playground she would play
Only eleven years how else can one explain
how a girl could tempt a grown man to stray
INTERLUDE
The Doctor’s daughter
‘DIVE FOR THAT BUNKER!’ She did not know if she could make it there. She tore the camera bag off her partner’s shoulder and let it drop behind them. ‘Just go!’ She screamed. Another incoming missile landed not 50 yards off her left shoulder. Her ears already ringing, eyes crusted w/ desert dust, she pumped her legs as hard as she could and dove belly-slide down behind the dirt barricade. Two other reporters jumped in behind her. A soldier next to her looked briefly over his shoulder, ‘Get into the damn bunker! Move! What the fuck is a civilian woman doing in this mess anyway?’ She kept one hand out for balance, the other on her voice recorder. Hopefully, all this would make it back to the western media. Hopefully she’d stay alive to deliver the story.
The doctors daughter
I must tell the world about what’s happening here
“What does a pretty, fair-haired maiden have to say?”
If I were homely, or if I were a man
Would you find more comfort by my pen
The doctor’s daughter she was a witch they say
On the devil’s playground she would stray
And though she lost her life to tell us all the tale
Still they’ll ask what right she had being there.
Come all you daughters, not through it yet today
on the devil’s playground they say we stray
and if just one of us can blame another still
then to win this battle we never will