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A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in The Bull on Ambridge Green;
Ian was teaching the marching songs he learned as a Loyalist teen.
Apart from the rest, Will Grundy sat, his face like a miserable totem,
And at the back, watching them all, was the lady known as Em.

When out of the wind and the pelting rain, and into the fug and the beer,
There stumbled a poacher fresh from the woods, dog-dirty, and loaded for deer.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet up strode he to Sid at the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.
No one could place the stranger's face, not even the token gay;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Woeful Will Grunday.

There's men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;
I got to figgerin' who he was, and wonderin' what was his problem,
And I turned my head -- and watching him was the lady that's known as Em.

He eyes went wanderin' round the room and he seemed in a kind of daze,
Till at last through the smoke he saw someone who seemed to attract his gaze.
In a white t-shirt that was grey with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway,
Then he clutched his guitar with his bony hands--my God! but the man could play.

Were you ever out on Lakey Hill, when the moon was awful clear,
With only the howl of a muntjac deer, and nothing to hold but your fear,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, and no money to spend in the bars?
Then you'll have a hunch what the music meant... hunger and love and the stars.

And hunger not of the belly kind, that's met by Tom's sausage 'n' beans,
But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;
For a caravan far from the cares of the world, two wheels and a roof above;
For a son that's as good as yours, so you were told by the woman you love--
A woman dearer than all the world, and true as a diamond gem--
(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge,--the lady that's known as Em.)
Then on a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;
But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear;
That something had changed in the woman you loved; that her love was a devil's lie;
She'd taken the boy and gone home to her mother, and left without a goodbye.
'Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair, when your strength is wasting away--
And from the corner, "I'm his father!" cried Woeful William Grundy.

The music almost dies away... then it burst like the Am in flood;
We heard the cry, "He's moine, he's moine," and my eyes were blind with blood.
The thought came back of happier days, when you used to cut a dash,
And the lust awoke to kill, to kill... then the music stopped with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;
In a white t-shirt that was grey with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm,
And "Boys," says he, "you should all know me, and none of you gives a damn;
But I want to state, and my words are straight, and as sure as my name is Grundy,
That one of you is a hound of hell... and that one is Willliam Grundy."

Then I ducked my head and the lights went out, and shotguns blazed in the dark;
A woman screamed, and the lights went up, and the brothers lay stiff and stark.
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Woeful William Grundy,
While the man from the woods lay clutched to the breast of the lady that's known as Em.

These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.
They say that the stranger was crazed with cider and I'm not denying it's so.
I'm not so wise as the lawyer Sharps, and I'm the last to condemn--
The woman that kissed him and broke his heart--was the lady known as Em.

More parodies - from Agatha Christie to Damon Runyon



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