The Filksong

[bnewman]

lyrics by Benjamin Newman, after "The Palace" by Rudyard Kipling

set to music by Leslie Fish

/ DC D CG A / DC D C A / DC D CG A / DC D C -G D - /

 

When I was a Bard and a Filker, a Minstrel clever and bright,

I jotted down words for a filksong, such as a Bard might write.

As rhythm grew out of the scansion, each syllable set to a note,

It went to the tune of a filksong that some Bard already wrote.

 

There seemed to be sense in the lyrics — witty, but not to my taste —

Hither and thither they rambled, as if composed in haste —

Punnery brute and mishandled, but written in every verse:

"After me cometh a Filker.  Tell him, it could be worse!"

 

Swift to my use in my stanzas, where my well-planned couplets flowed,

Keeping the rhyme-scheme and scansion, the melody and the mode.

But mincemeat I made of the lyrics, and neatly the theme I milked;

Taking and leaving at pleasure the words of the song I filked.

 

Yet I despised not nor gloried;  For as I wrote, so I read,

Through all the original lyrics, the wit in that filker's head.

As he had risen and pleaded, so did I understand

The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the song he had planned.

 

* * *

 

When I was a Bard and a Filker — in the all-night spree of my pride,

They sent me a Word from the Concom.  They whispered and called me aside.

They said — "Thy song shall be taken."  They said — "Thy wit shall succumb."

"Thy song shall be filked like that other's, the spoil of Filkers to come."

 

What once has been filked be copied, and parodied ever again.

The wit of my words I entrusted to the hearts of the filking fen.

Only I left in the lyrics, at the end of the final verse:

"After me cometh a Filker.  Tell him, it could be worse!"