A Merry Christmas to all my fellow celebrants! To everyone else: I hope this Saturday finds you well. As is tradition on this blog, I’ve spent the last couple weeks hammering out some D&D-inspired lyrics to an old Christmas caroling standard. My singing voice has not improved, but I think I’m gradually developing a better sense of rhyme and meter during these annual songwriting exercises.
If you’re a new reader, this is the eighth time I’ve done this, so there’s quite a back catalogue of songs by now.
I wasn’t able to fit in a backing track for the melody this year. Apparently the second verse of the song isn’t a refrain, despite having a completely different structure from every other verse? I wanted to use it as a refrain, which means we’re stuck with an acapella performance this year.
O Lantern Light — Lyrics
O Lantern Light, shining in search of plunder.
A tool for folk accustomed to the sun.
A beacon, too, for beasts of ter’ble hunger
lurking near ’til there’s no chance to run.
A joyous cry of hunger to be sated.
Your human meat will make an ogre’s feast!
(Refrain)
Try to parley,
cajole, flatter, inveigle!
Oh talk for your life!
Chat them up, or else you die.
Oh talk for your life,
talk for your life!
Deep down beneath a long-dead wizard’s tower
eyes alight with a greedy glint of green.
Kick down a door searching for magic power,
or things that shine with a golden treasure sheen.
Instead you find a lot—a lot—of goblins.
Ten thousand more than you could hope to fight!
(Refrain)
Far far from home chasing a treasure rumor:
a piled heap where a dragon could sit.
One rests there now, fate has a sense of humor,
as does the thief, who insists she can stealth it.
The heap disturbed, the dragon quickly wakens.
The thief proclaims you as the cleaning crew!
(Refrain)