This is a filk of Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald, in honour of the impending Baron St Florian, Master Drake Morgan.
(7 November 2013)
The legend lives on from Saint Florian on down
Of the big man they call Master Drakey
He cooks, fights and brews, he fills mighty big shoes,
Though at self-preservation he’s flaky.
With a load on his back would make lesser men crack
He could play the known world like an organ
Till the day that his fate came, a little bit late,
With the death of the Baron Drake Morgan!
It wasn’t a fight with a dark stormy knight,
Or some failed engineering construction —
‘Twas down in the shack where he brews mead and sack
He invented his doom and destruction
Concluding a brew from a recipe he knew
Of ingredients hyperkinetic
And later that night as he sleep-talked in fright,
Could it be that his words were prophetic?
He woke with the sun, made his customary run
To the outhouse as he did every morning,
And every man could tell that it wasn’t going well
From the time that he spent, and the groaning.
In time he emerged, quite considerably purged,
With his cheery smile somewhat eroded
As he neared his chateau, chanced to stub his big toe
Gave a burp, glanced about, and exploded!
The force of this blitz blew him thoroughly to bits,
He was maimed, sundered, minced and beheaded.
The bits of his trunk fell in terrible chunks,
And his kneecaps were partially shredded.
Some bits of his brain fell as gooey pinkish rain,
Several miles from the rest of his body.
“Mr Happy” was found fourteen feet off the ground
Up a tree out in Mynydd Kynghordy.
Does anyone know where the boldest souls go?
‘Twas Acacia who dreamed of his travels:
In halo and helm, he now wandered each realm,
As the thread of his lifeline unravelled,
He visited hell, which he knew fairly well,
For he’d lived through some Innilgard weather,
But the finest of steak, left by demons to bake,
When served up, tasted too much like leather.
So to Heaven he hied, and the saints’ realm he tried,
To decide if it lived up to stories.
But the great Pearly Gates were entirely third-rate
When compared to St Florian’s glories!
Olympus, the home of the old gods of Rome
Was the next afterlife that he cruised through,
But Bacchus’s brew was like sump oil in shoes
When compared to the tipple he’s used to.
Avoiding those planes where the lesser souls remain,
He proceeded instead to Valhalla,
For how could this man be content with a plan
To live on in perpetual squalor?
At great Odin’s throne, Drakey made himself known,
And requested a seat at their table.
But Thor told him first he must sit and slake his thirst,
With an Asgarder ale if he’s able!
His corpse lay in state since that terrible date,
By the best costume peers re-assembled,
When he opened his eye, gave a great lusty sigh,
And the mourners in wonder all trembled!
“I’m back,” he declared, to his love standing there,
Saying “Asgard sent back your dear Drakey!
“I out-drank those crews and their valkyries’ booze,
“Now Valhalla’s too fearful to take me!”
The legend lives on from Saint Florian on down
Of the big man they call Master Drakey
He cooks, fights and brews, he fills mighty big shoes,
Though at self-preservation he’s flaky…