Across the mountains bare
Is a place where every boy and man,
And anybody else who can,
Must grow a bushy beard and waist-length hair.
There has always, in that nation,
Been this honourable custom
But the younger generation
With their insubordination
Have now taken these old laws and done their best to try to bust 'em.
Shocked old ladies talk about
The youths who cut their curling locks,
A lad like that is just a "lout"
They say, to go about without
A decent length of hair protruding from the top of his brainbox.
Then, even worse, as some had feared,
As well as removing their streaming curls,
Some of these rebels cut off their beard.
The decent folk all simply jeered -
For how could you tell these naughty boys from girl?
Even girls began to take
The hair that they had all their lives
Looked after, and, quite ruthless, make
The fiendish scissors each strand break
And cut it short. What men would take such treacherous girls for wives?
These youngsters, I agree, were fools,
Just wanting folk to notice them
By breaking these time-honoured rules.
The worst ones were expelled from schools,
And social outcasts were these girls and men.
The king who sat upon the seat
Of gold, the throne of this great place,
Died lately, grieved by this defeat
Of custom, for, down to his feet
The good king's hair hung, covering up his face.
His son succeeded him, and he
Had also long and flowing hair
Reaching further than his knee
Hanging gently, floating free,
Dangling down about him in the air.
He had a beard, two feet in length,
And moustache matching with his hair.
A mighty man he was, with strength
(For nothing else will rhyme with "length")
To cut this short, he cut it short, until his head was bare.
And everyone was horrified,
And they, with loud indignant voice,
Demanded that their king be tried
In court, then hanged, who had defied
The customs, but the young folk did rejoice.
And all of them cut off their hair
And all their heads were shining bald
And all their faces clear and fair.
Not even eyebrows would they wear.
They caused the older generation to be sore appalled.
Bald men, bald girls in the street.
"Down with hair!" they chant and sing.
"No more hair down to our feet!"
And all they meet, who have hair, they beat,
Crying out, "God save our hairless king!"
And then there happened, so I'm told,
A mighty battle in the street
Between the young folk and the old.
On both sides were there fighters bold,
And neither of them would admit defeat.
Now is the sad part of my song -
The ones with hair killed those without.
The hairless ones were young and strong.
The battle kept on going, long,
'Til most forgot what it was all about.
But in the end the old folk won,
And all the hairless ones were slain.
They killed the rebels brave and young -
Even bald babies died by the gun -
And the hairless king went to the guillotine.
It was the king's own fault, they say,
That he was put to death this way -
He cut off the part of his head that was hair;
They cut off the rest, to make it fair.
There are certain customs that even the king should obey.
Now across the mountains bare,
Far away in a distant land,
Some old men live, with long, long hair,
Who remember still this strange affair,
And, of young folk, only an insignificant band.-
Those cowards who had not cut their hair
And yet had escaped their old comrades.
The old have killed the young. Now where
Are people to carry on the race?
Who'll walk now through the lonely glades?
Now it's a burnt and desolate place,
As bare as the heads of the rebels who cut their hair.