Randall Knife Lyrics - Dublin Blues - Guy Clark

My father had a Randall knife 

My mother gave it to him 

When he went off to WWII 

To save us all from ruin 

If you've ever held a Randall knife 

Then you know my father well 

If a better blade was ever made 

It was probably forged in hell 

My father was a good man 

A lawyer by his trade 

And only once did I ever see 

Him misuse the blade 

It almost cut his thumb off 

When he took it for a tool 

The knife was made for darker things 

And you could not bend the rules 

He let me take it camping once 

On a Boy Scout jamboree 

And I broke a half an inch off 

Trying to stick it in a tree 

I hid it from him for a while 

But the knife and he were one 

He put it in his bottom drawer 

Without a hard word one 

There it slept and there it stayed 

For twenty some odd years 

Sort of like Excalibur 

Except waiting for a tear 

My father died when I was forty 

And I couldn't find a way to cry 

Not because I didn't love him 

Not because he didn't try 

I'd cried for every lesser thing 

Whiskey, pain and beauty 

But he deserved a better tear 

And I was not quite ready 

So we took his ashed out to sea 

And poured `em off the stern 

And threw the roses in the wake 

Of everything we'd learned 

When we got back to the house 

They asked me what I wanted 

Not the lawbooks not the watch 

I need the things he's haunted 

My hand burned for the Randall knife 

There in the bottom drawer 

And I found a tear for my father's life 

And all that it stood for