Where the peat smoke curls round the crofter's door
A shepherd counts what the moorland tore
Ninety-nine lambs but the hundredth stray
And the bell's tongue froze where the fog delayed
His crook carves maps in the frostbitten air
Tracking the ghost of a fleece gone bare
The curl you cries where the bracken's thin
A hymn for the flock that won't follow him
Oh,
the bellwether's gone with the wind's cold creak
Leaving the hillside to bleed and bleed
The fiddle scrapes where the shadows conspire
And the mandolin plucks a fraying wire Sing,
shepherds,
sing to the hallowed stone
The flock's a storm you can't lead alone
Trembled her voice in the raven's croak
A girl who wore the dawn as a cloak
She danced with the lambs,
neat the adder stare Left her laugh in the well,
her name in the air
Now the accordion wheezes a dirge through the grass
As he mends the wall where the boundaries pass
The bellwether's trail just a snag of thread
A riddle the crows chant soft overhead
Oh, the
bellwether's gone with the wind's cold creak
Leaving the hillside to bleed and bleed
The fiddle scrapes where the shadows conspire
And the mandolin plucks a fraying wire Sing,
shepherds,
sing to the hallowed stone
The flock's a storm you can't lead alone
The desert howled like a banshee's child
Chewing the path from the wild to the wild
The bell's cracked tongue sang a backward song
A warning etched in ice and calm
Oh,
the flock's now wolves and the moon's pale light
And the shepherd's breath is the first to die
Now the crook lies snapped where the peat bog sighs
The bell's dull throb drowned by the kestrel's cries
The hundredth lamb just a whisper breath
A flicker of wine in the arms of death
But the moor still
hums its olden tone A lullaby for the lost and the lone