This is a song I haven’t really thought about since the 70s, but it turned up when I started to (try to) rationalize my boxes and folders of lyrics, verse and prose, so I put it straight down as-is.
Backup:
Between the bar and the dance floor / Thinking that maybe
I might just catch up / To my accelerated lady
Why don’t you keep on dancing? / Dance on by
Watching you at a party / Too drunk to see
What it might take / To make you come and talk to me
But you’d better keep on dancing / Dance on by
What makes you think / I should apologise
For once drowning / In those bedroom eyes
Why don’t you keep on dancing? / Dance on by
Lights run hot / But the bottle’s not yet dry
With a little luck and whisky I’ll forget / even your name by midnight
I previously recorded a fairly polished version of this, complete with double-tracked vocals and bouzoukis. This is a quicker-and-dirtier version that has, however, the words as I sing them now…
Two isn’t company, three is a crowd Two is a silence, three is too loud Two is a silence gets harder to break But three always leaves one left over
Three into two isn’t good for the head It’s no problem in math, but it’s bad news in bed And it’s one for an ace and two for a pair
But three always leaves one left over
When we’re alone somehow he’s always there You say it’s the same when you two are the pair
So it’s one for sorrow and two for joy But three always leaves one left over
All the shouting is over and dead Somehow there’s nothing much else to be said And it’s one for the money and two for the show But three always leaves one left over
Two isn’t company, three is a crowd Two is a silence, three is too loud Two is a silence gets harder to break But three always leaves one left over
The Inclosure Acts enabled the passing into private hands land that had previously been designated as either ‘common’ or ‘waste’. This process preceded by several centuries the formal Inclosure Acts (which began with an Act if 1604) and continued into the 20th century, resulting in the enclosure of nearly seven million acres. While enclosure facilitated more efficient agricultural methods, that same increased efficiency and loss of communal land was a factor in the move of so many agricultural labourers into towns. There are a number of variations of this poem, which is usually assumed to date from the 1750s or ’60s, when enclosure legislation started to accelerate dramatically. The tune here is mine, recorded for the album ‘Cold Iron‘. :)
That Mudcat thread suggests ‘See Amid The Winter’s Snow’ – a nice carol tune, but doesn’t quite right to me.
I also wrote a more contemporary version of the lyric: The Goose And The Commons. I’m not sure I’ll do a sung version of that, though.
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common’
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.
David Harley Words & Music 
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