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The Ballad Of Alferd Packer

Sit down my friends, come hear this true story

It's interesting, but it's also gory

 

One fine day in eighteen seventy-four

Alferd Packer, who just loved to explore

With five friends, he began a three-month tour

'Cross the Rockies, but don't ask me what for

 

Six men walked for seventy-five miles

But the voyage just was not all smiles

For you see, when the group finally came back

Five of the men the party now did lack

 

At the end of those cold seventy-five

Alferd Packer alone finished alive

When asked why, he didn't know what to say

His memory seemed to change day to day

 

But at last he settled on one version

Of what happened on that long excursion

The police decided this one was true

And it's this one that I'll now tell to you

 

One hiker, it seemed, whose name had been Bell

Just went insane, but why no one could tell

Packer claimed that Bell had killed all the rest

Of the hikers, and that packer was next

 

So ole Packer, he said, "I tried my best

To stop him; but I fought back with such zest

Shannon Bell died, but it's just common sense

When I say, I killed him in self-defense"

 

Then Alferd, he was left with five dead men

What could he do? It was getting cold then

So Alferd, to warm up that freezing hell

Took the body and he devoured Bell

 

For dessert he then ate his other four

Dead companions; but hey — what are friends for?

When finished, he caused a sensation

By arriving at the tour's destination

 

When Alferd had ended his gruesome tale

The local cops threw him quickly in jail

Where he served over seventeen long years

But if his fate fills your eyes now with tears

 

I'll reveal here, he was released alive

Died a free man, the age of sixty-five

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Written by
chance-bishop
Published
Feb 14, 2010
Lines·Words
40·317
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