First draft of a song lyric for the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Sort of a 2015 version of the Coventry Carol, I guess. I don’t have a tune for it yet, but this tune (Jim Moray’s take on a traditional folk tune) was in my mind while I was writing it.
The Sons of Bethlehem
Twas in the light of dawn they came a-killing
They never made a sound
But like a bloodstain silently were spreading
Throughout our sleeping town
And from their mothers’ arms they took our children
Or snatched them from their beds
And long before the sun arose that morning
A hundred sons were dead
It was no child of ours that they were seeking
These death squads of the night
Just incidental killings with no meaning
Victims of Herod’s might
They say the boy they wanted did escape them
Before the midnight hour
I wish some angel voice had given warning
To save these boys of ours
If there’s a god above us up in heaven
Vengeance is his, they say,
But how can God in heaven understand it
The evil done this day?
He’d have to live as one of us and suffer
By brutal powers condemned
And die in pain, just like our innocent children
The sons of Bethlehem
By Tim Chesterton, December 2015
