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Brave David Tyrie

from Dark Harvest by Malcolm MacWatt

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about

A stark story about the last person to be hanged, drawn and quartered in Britain, a hideous punishment reserved for the crime of treason. No institution should ever have the power to treat people with such barbarity. I’d like to see Scotland as a republic so I had a lot of sympathy for Tyrie, a Scotsman who was openly critical of the monarchy.

lyrics

Hung, drawn and quartered, was there anything so cruel
To make a fine example to bolster tyrant rule
A punishment so monstrous, devised by monarchy
The last to die this way a Scotsman
Brave David Tyrie

In seventeen hundred and eighty two in Portsmouth, Southsea
A navy clerk he was accused name of David Tyrie
Put on trial for treason, a crime against the crown
For conspiring with a Frenchman and guilty he was found

By all accounts his gruesome end was bravely met that day
100,000 citizens cheered and clapped the deadly play
With head held high, eyes ablaze and silent dignity
The King’s justice upon him fell with inhumanity

Hoisted high by the neck til he near passed out for good
His head cut off, his heart cut out, his private parts removed
His body chopped and quartered then buried in the sand
But the good people of Portsmouth were not content with that

They dug him up, ripped at his corpse to take a trophy home
The women pushed and pulled to dip silk handkerchiefs in blood
His severed head was stole away for voyeurs keen to pay
Portsmouth showed its ugly side on that dreadful day

For the people of the Kingdom, this was the final straw
They vowed to end this spectacle of death for evermore
So the brutal act of punishment passed into history
And we no longer bow and scrape or have to bend the knee

credits

from Dark Harvest, released January 25, 2024
Piano by Phil Dearing

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Malcolm MacWatt London, UK

“MacWatt will doubtless be considered among the best of the new breed of folksingers and songwriters, who speak of the past as a way to perhaps understand it and move forward” Stephen Rapid, Lonesome Highway

“He shines as a singer and he shines as an interpreter of the eternal folk songbook,” Tom Brosseau, The Great American Folk Show, North Dakota
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