Lyrics

Snallygaster

I saw the sky above me
Turn from day to night
With long neck and leather wings
Blocking out the light
They say it’ll steal your hens,
That it’ll drink you dry
It whistles like a steam train,
It has ten thousand eyes

Paint a seven-pointed star on your barn,
you can run but you can’t run faster
Take no chances, do no harm
just beware the snallygaster

Its scream will curdle blood and milk,
Smells like the fires of hell
With three red eyes and tentacles,
Or so the papers tell
The president went hunting it,
The farmers stayed inside
It snapped and yelled at Roosevelt,
So Teddy went home and cried

The kilnman down in Cumberland
Saw it fast asleep
Roosting in an old cow barn,
Counting flocks of sheep
Its claws are sharp and glowing steel,
Its egg could hatch a whale
And if you see it coming,
You won’t live to tell the tale

I saw the snallygaster
Falling from the sky
Head over tail, it tried and failed
To spread its wings and fly
Overcome by moonshine fumes,
It fell into a still
Last I heard the revenue
Took it to pay the bill