THE CHAINS THAT YOU REFUSE

I’m surfing through the channels last night, nuthin’s on. On Channel 13 they are having their Beg-A-Thon, trying to raise money, and they always use the “Celtic Woman” program. I guess it a big draw. But I’ve been watching Celtic Woman for 20 years now, ever since the Riverdance craze. I’m about done with gorgeous Irish lasses singing beautiful weeping Irish ballads.

But while swinging through from channel to channel, here we have the lasses doing a new song.
"Bonny Portmore".
"Bonny Portmore" is an Irish traditional folk song which laments the demise of Ireland's old oak forests, specifically the Great Oak of Portmore. It’s a beautiful song, it really is, especially the Lorrena McKinnett version, so I listen and move on.

Still nothing on anywhere, and passing by Celtic Woman again and what’s this?
They are doing “Beeswing” by Richard Thompson, a very beautiful love song about a little slip of a gal that cannot be tamed.
So you know I have to listen to it. Its about time they updated their playlist. The four lasses are doing OK with it, and there is a guy playing the pipes. The chorus:

"She was a rare thing
Fine as a beeswing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child
She was running wild, she said
As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay
And you wouldn't want me any other way"

But here is the thing.
They didn’t do the last verse!
What the hell?
How can you not do the last verse?
They stopped at “like a fool I let her run with a ramblin' itch”.
No Gypsy caravan, no wolfhound, no hip pocket, no faded flower, no chains refused.
Is that horrible or what?

The missing lyrics:

"Last I hear she's sleeping out
Back on Derby beat
White Horse in her hip pocket
And a wolfhound at her feet
And they say she even married once
A man named Romany Brown
But even a Gypsy caravan
Was too much settling down
And they say her flower is faded now
Hard weather and hard booze
But maybe that's just the price you pay
For the chains you refuse"