The Rocky Road to Duskmarket

The road song of the Twilight Veil, sung fast, sung loud, and sung by people who have walked it. A Navi boy leaves the Lampfield beds with his mother's blessing and a stout stick, is robbed on the way in the politest manner imaginable, arrives at the Duskmarket to find his goods already entered on somebody else's book, and settles the matter on the seventh floor with his fists. Nobody in the Veil considers this a tragedy. It is simply how one arrives.

The Song

In the deep of leaf-fall from the beds I started, Left the growers' daughters not entirely broken-hearted, Saluted father dear, kissed me darling mother, Drank a thimble clear, me debts and dreads to smother, Then off to make a name, leave the beds and flame, Cut a stout blackthorn to banish ghost and goblin, Bought a pair of boots, rattling through the roots, Frightening all the newts on the rocky road to Duskmarket.

One, two, three, four, five, Hood the lamp and turn her down the rocky road, And all the way to Duskmarket, whack fol lol le rah!

One long mile from home the truedark closed above me, Not a glim of foolsfire and no living thing to love me, Met a decent fellow selling light down at the crossing, Sixpence for a wick — and the interest is still grossing, So I hooded up me lamp and went splashing through the damp, Every wolf spider on the floor come out to follow, And the leaf come down in sheets, blocking all the streets, Burying me feet on the rocky road to Duskmarket.

One, two, three, four, five, Hood the lamp and turn her down the rocky road, And all the way to Duskmarket, whack fol lol le rah!

In the Shadowed Vale I stopped to rest me shoulder, Sat upon a stone that was cold and getting colder, Vale girls come by and they laughed to see me hobbling, Says one, "He's off the beds" — and the rest of them was gobbling, Then a grey and quiet man with a very civil manner Asked me for the road and stood between me and me lantern, Neat as you could ask, unhurried at the task, And he'd lifted me flask on the rocky road to Duskmarket.

One, two, three, four, five, Hood the lamp and turn her down the rocky road, And all the way to Duskmarket, whack fol lol le rah!

Then I come upon the Giant lying broke across the hollow, Every hole in it a-blazing, and a hundred more to follow, Eleven floors of bargain in a tree that's still descending, And the lean is in the rent, and there's nobody offending, So I asked after me goods, like an honest fellow should, And they told me that it would be sold by evening, Says the clerk, "It's on the book, if you'd care to have a look — That's the name that you took on the rocky road to Duskmarket."

One, two, three, four, five, Hood the lamp and turn her down the rocky road, And all the way to Duskmarket, whack fol lol le rah!

On the seventh floor a High Bower lad was talking, Says the floor is for them as hasn't got the wing for walking, Says he, "Ye stink of foolsfire and ye squint like all yer people," So I fetched him with the blackthorn and he toppled like a steeple, Then the Bower boys stood up — but the Rookeries come up, And the whole eleven floors was out and shouting, Oh, we paid them out in full and we never touched a till, And they're singing of it still on the rocky road to Duskmarket.

One, two, three, four, five, Hood the lamp and turn her down the rocky road, And all the way to Duskmarket, whack fol lol le rah!

Notes on the Singing

The last word. Duskmarket is a beat too long for the line and every singer in the province knows it. It is crushed into the bar — Dusk'market — and a singer who takes the time to say it properly is marked at once as somebody who learned the song off a page.

The chorus. Hood the lamp and turn her down is the whole of light law in nine syllables, which is why the Shutter Watch has never been able to object to a song that is, in every other particular, an account of crimes. The count that opens it — one, two, three, four, five — is a lantern-check: the number of hooded wicks in a party, called off before stepping onto the road. In the Rookeries it is still used that way, unsung.

The flask. The theft in the third verse is admired rather than resented, and Duskmarket audiences reliably applaud the grey man. He does nothing violent, nothing hurried, and nothing that could be sworn to afterward. He is, in the Veil's estimation, a professional.

The name. The clerk's line in the fourth verse is the joke the whole song is built toward, and it does not travel. A Spriggan name is credit, not identity; what the grey man stole was not the boy's flask but his standing, and by the time the boy reaches the Fallen Giant somebody else has already spent it. Ring audiences hear a song about a robbery. Veil audiences hear a song about a young man who learned, in one week, what a name is for.

Provenance

Claimed by everybody. Lampfield has it as a Lampfield song, on the grounds that the boy sets out from the beds. The Loa play it fastest and insist it is a marsh tune with the words put on later, which is probably true of the tune and certainly false of the words. High Bower does not sing it.

The verse count is unstable. Six verses circulate in Hollowgate, the extra one placing the boy on the Unmarked Mile in company he declines to describe; it is generally held to be a later addition by somebody with a bugbear creditor and a sense of humour. The Ledger Floor keeps a copy of the fifth verse for reasons it has never explained, and there is a persistent story that Grismer can sing the whole thing and has, once, at a very small table.

Ring version. The Eternal City sings a shorter and much slower arrangement in which the boy is robbed, repents, and returns home to his mother. It has four verses, no fight, and no clerk. The Veil finds it hilarious.