Jawbone And The Air-Rifle
Lyrics
The rabbit killer left his home for the clough (2)
And said goodbye to his infertile spouse (3)
Carried air rifle and firm stock of wood
Carried night sight telescope light
A cemetery overlooked clough valley of mud
And the grave-keeper was out on his rounds
Yellow-white shirt buried in duffel coat hood (4)
Keeping edges out with mosaic color stones
Jawbone and the air rifle
Who would think they would bring harm?
Jawbone and the air rifle
One is cursed and one is borne (5)
The air rifle lets out a mis-placed shot
It smashed a chip off a valued tomb (6)
Grave-keeper tending wreath-roots said
"Explain, move into the light of the moon"
"I thought you were rabbit prey, or a loose sex criminal"
Rifleman he say "Y'see I get no kicks anymore
From wife or children four
There's been no war for forty years
And getting drunk fills me with guilt
So after eight, I prowl the hills
Eleven o'clock, I'm tired to fuck
Y'see I've been laid off work"
The grave-keeper said
"You're out of luck
And here is a jawbone caked in muck
Carries the germ of a curse
Of the Broken Brothers Pentacle Church (7)
Formed on a Scotch island
To make you a bit of a man" (8)
Jawbone and the air rifle
Who would think they would bring harm?
Jawbone and the air rifle
One is cursed and one is warm (9)
The rabbit killer did not eat for a week
And no way he can look at meat
No bottle has he anymore (10)
It could be his mangled teeth
He sees jawbones on the street
Advertisements become carnivores
And roadworkers turn into jawbones
And he has visions of islands, heavily covered in slime
The villagers dance round pre-fabs (11)
And laugh through twisted mouths
Don't eat
It's disallowed
Suck on marrowbones and energy from the mainland
Jawbone and the air rifle
Who would think they would bring harm?
Jawbone and the air rifle
One is cursed and one is gone (12)
Notes
1. Dan: Paul Hanley's Have a Bleedin Guess quotes Marc Riley (125):
Mark said to Craig that he wanted something like 'Run Rabbit Run' to fit his lyrics. We wrote it in my bedroom.
"Run Rabbit Run" is a song by Flanagan and Allen from the World War II era. The melody can be discerned in the riff here.
2. A clough is a steep-sided ravine, usually with a creek or river running through it. Huckleberry speculates: "Is the clough perhaps Prestwich Clough, and the cemetery the one next to the North Manchester Synagogue (which from the map seems to overlook the path running south from Prestwich Clough)?"
Paul Hanley finds this plausible--Have a Bleedin Guess, p.126:
The Annotated Fall website speculates, with some credibility, that the song is set where Prestwich Clough backs onto the North Manchester Synagogue and its adjacent cemetery.
Mark Senior comments: "If this is Prestwich Clough then the graveyard is just as likely to be the one at St Mary's church: the graveyard runs down into the Clough so they are practically the same thing at one point."
3. This line has inspired a fair deal of analysis on the Fall online forum, as the hunter is later said to have four children. Sure, she could have become infertile after they were born, but would a man with four children really be bemoaning his wife's infertility in any case? Thus, theories have arisen that she is spiritually barren, that the children are from a previous marriage, that MES really means "frigid," that he actually says something else in putative "four" line, etc. Perhaps, however, he just wanted more children; some people do have quite a few. Or maybe he's not worried about it, but the narrator mentions it anyway, because...because...
4. Duffel (or "duffle") is a coarse woolen material; duffel bags were originally also made from it. According to my spies, duffel/duffle coats are common in the UK.
5. On Hex Enduction Hour the song is mixed curiously, as the vocals on the chorus are very low in the mix. The Peel session foregrounds the vocals for a much poppier effect.
Robert points out that "The main motif of this track somewhat resembles the chorus of "Run Rabbit Run", a popular WW2 song" (see note 1). Of course there is a similar theme, also.
6. From Dan:
Paul Hanley, in Have a Bleedin Guess (p.129) points out MES's economy of language in this lyric, and notes in this respect that "valued" suggests "both expense and sentimental attachment."
7. A Google search for "Pentacle Church" turns up a bunch of Wiccans and the like, and certainly the church in question here is not of the Christian stripe.
8. Huckleberry: "The subtitle of the song in the Lough Press book is "A wee tale from the Anthrax Isle," which indicates that the "Scotch island" is Gruinard (but MES might also have been thinking of The Wicker Man)."
Gruinard Island is an uninhabited Scottish Island where Anthrax was tested by the British government during World War II. The island was contaminated for many years, until it was finally declared clean in 1990 following a campaign by a group called Dark Harvest Commando of the Scottish Citizen Army who started leaving containers of contaminated soil around where the British military would find them...
9. Duncan Goddard points out that this line is odd, as an air rifle does not use an explosive charge.
10. Mike Watt: "On first view this relates back to the guy feeling guilty about getting drunk mentioned earlier... but to 'lose one's bottle' is a phrase meaning 'has no fight left' or 'is scared.'"
11. This maybe refers to the pre-fab homes built in Britain after the second World War to accomodate the demand for cheap housing.
From Paul Hanley:
There was an entire estate of pre-fab houses in Heaton Park, Prestwich, when Mark was growing up. Originally built as temporary housing at the end of the Second World War, they were still there in the seventies.
Have a Bleedin Guess, p.131, note 116 (thanks Dan)
12. The air-rifle is gone, and only the cursed jawbone remains. This may suggest the hunter has died.
Duncan Goddard comments:
The last line of each chorus...the jawbone of the title is something that's being dealt with by the grave-keeper tending the wreath-roots of the valued tomb; perhaps vandalism has exposed this bone and, to add insult to injury, the same tombstone is then struck by the stray pellet from the air-rifle.
So, the jawbone carries the curse, which now passes to our hunter, who loses his appetite and (presumably viewing it as the mechanism of his misfortune) gets rid of the weapon.
GDEdgewater:
I noticed typically Lovecraftian references in the final verse which don't seem to have been pointed out here. "And he has visions of islands, heavily covered in slime" is very evocative of the discovery of the Island/City of R’lyeh, jutting out of the sea in the South Pacific from 'The Call of Cthulhu':
"... in S. Latitude 47° 9′, W. Longitude 126° 43′ come upon a coast-line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror—the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, that was built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults...'
".. villagers dance round ... And laugh through twisted mouths" is also very evocative of a Lovecraftian bacchanal of the type seen in the aforementioned story, or by residents of Innsmouth. Lovecraft transposed to Suburban Manchester, in typical MES fashion?
More Information
Comments (57)

- 1. | 13/07/2013

- 2. | 13/07/2013

- 3. | 14/07/2013

- 4. | 01/08/2013

- 5. | 01/08/2013

- 6. | 26/08/2013
Dan

- 7. | 02/05/2015

- 8. | 20/08/2015

- 9. | 23/04/2016

- 10. | 16/06/2016

- 11. | 12/11/2017
On first view this relates back to the guy feeling guilty about getting drunk mentioned earlier... but to 'loose one's bottle' is a phrase meaning 'has no fight left' or 'is scared'.

- 12. | 13/11/2017

- 13. | 02/12/2017

- 14. | 26/01/2018

- 15. | 04/02/2018

- 16. | 14/07/2018

- 17. | 09/12/2018
"night-site"
Night-sight, surely?

- 18. | 19/01/2019

- 19. | 19/01/2019

- 20. | 05/11/2019
so the jawbone carries the curse, which now passes to our hunter, who loses his appetite & (presumably viewing it as the mechanism of his misfortune) gets rid of the weapon.
'borne' as in 'carried'.
'warm' after being fired (though there's no explosives involved in air-rifles, so this is a bit odd)
'gone' as in 'got rid of it'.

- 21. | 27/12/2019
Mark said to Craig that he wanted something like 'Run Rabbit Run' to fit his lyrics. We wrote it in my bedroom.
(p.125)

- 22. | 27/12/2019
The Annotated Fall website speculates, with some credibility, that the song is set where Prestwich Clough backs onto the North Manchester Synagogue and its adjacent cemetery.
"with some credibility", note!

- 23. | 27/12/2019
Paul Hanley, in Have a Bleedin Guess (p.129) points out MES' economy of language in this lyric, and notes in this respect that "valued" suggests "both expense and sentimental attachment".

- 24. | 27/12/2019
Paul Hanley again:
There was an entire estate of pre-fab houses in Heaton Park, Prestwich, when Mark was growing up. Originally built as temporary housing at the end of the Second World War, they were still there in the seventies.
Have a Bleedin Guess, p.131, note 116.
There's information online about such estates: https://www.prefabmuseum.uk/content/history/history ((Archive)
See photos here: https://www.timepix.uk/PAGES/n-nKq3HD/Manchester-overspill-pages/Prefabs
See also: https://web.archive.org/web/20191227232000/https://www.prestwichandwhitefieldguide.co.uk/news/4803033.housing-past-its-use-by-date/

- 25. | 06/01/2020
"Here is a jawbone...", after all, could be plausibly read as "Look at this jawbone, take it with you".
But there is no indication in the lyric that the hunter is in physical possession of the jawbone, or burdened by carrying it around.
So perhaps what we actually have here is an example of "pointing the bone", as in the magical practice of Australian indigenous peoples, and elsewhere. For a shamen to point the bone at someone, in such cultures, is to sentence that person to death, and has a powerful psychological influence on those involved in the performance.
In other words, the grave-keeper doesn't give the bone to the hunter, he ritualistically points it at him and thereby curses him (and perhaps, as noted, he dies in the end).
See: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/point_the_bone
and: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdaitcha#Bone_pointing
See also, "voodoo death": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_death

- 26. | 06/01/2020

- 27. | 08/01/2020

- 28. | 16/01/2020
I've long tripped over this.
"Making a man" of someone is to in some sense metaphorically induct them into grown male adulthood - to toughen someone up through adversity, whether that be an arduous cross country run or world war one.
But to make "a bit of a man" of someone - what does that mean?
The phrase "a bit of a man" occurs in various literary texts, novels and essays if you google it, where it is used to describe slight figures, small men and so forth.
So to make someone a "bit of a man" is to diminish him somehow. It's perhaps as though the word "little" is missing: "make you a little bit of a man", would capture the meaning, I feel.

- 29. | 19/01/2020

- 30. | 22/03/2020

- 31. | 22/03/2020
Just to pursue this a bit further.
The lines are:
Carries the germ of a curse
Of the Broken Brothers Pentacle Church (7)
Formed on a Scotch island
To make you a bit of a man
I think we tend to parse this as "Carries the germ of a curse... To make you a bit of a man". In other words, it's the Jawbone's curse that has that effect (whatever that effect is, see comments above).
But what if that's wrong?
What if actually the "To make you a bit of a man" bit is, if you like, the purpose of the Broken Brothers Pentacle Church?
You could imagine the advertising:
"Join the Broken Brothers Pentacle Church!
We were founded on a Scottish Island
And we'll make a man out of you!"
Something like that.
No?

- 32. | 22/03/2020
But then "bit of" might only be there to supply syllables.
Hanley is right, interpret at your peril!

- 33. | 22/03/2020
If bone-pointing is the correct interpretation, that gives us a nice mirroring between the narrative at the beginning and end of the song, I've just realised.
The rabbit killer takes a shot with his rifle at the grave keeper at the beginning, and the grave keeper zaps him back with the jawbone at the end.

- 34. | 27/03/2020

- 35. | 31/05/2020

- 36. | 02/06/2020
You might be right, but as for "more likely", how would we assess that? It's definitely going to be one or the other, isn't it? Might be interesting to try and make a case one way or the other.
In favour of the Jewish synagogue, you could maybe point to textual clues like the reference to a "pentacle church" (the Star of David has six points, of course, but "pentacle" apparently need not signify five points). But perhaps that's a bit cryptic and forced.
It's probably a mistake to be too literal about it, but who cares about that?!

- 37. | 28/08/2020
"Broken brothers pentacle church".
The Grimm brothers, of fairy tale fame, collected many of their stories from the Harz mountains. The highest Harz peak is the Brocken. There are also connections to Goethe's version of Faust, in which Mephistopheles is trapped in a pentagram.
Also in the Harz are places like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexentanzplatz_(Harz). The pentagram is a Wiccan symbol. Perhaps Wicca is a "pentacle church", therefore?
You can apparently buy "Harzhexen" - puppet witch toys.
<slap>

- 38. | 10/09/2020

- 39. | 17/09/2020
So it was a good call.

- 40. | 20/09/2020

- 41. | 18/04/2021

A pentacle can be either a pentagram or, as in this case, a hexagram.

- 42. | 18/04/2021

- 43. | 21/04/2021

- 44. | 21/04/2021

- 45. | 24/04/2021

- 46. | 03/05/2021
None of this is straightforward, and there is a lot of stuff that is mysterious. Could be masonic associations, which would help with the "brothers" bit.
But I am very struck by the symbolism in that window.

In the story told in the song, the pentacle church may either just represent a religious community or it could be a church building. And it could be on the putative island. But MES was clearly looking around him and finding bits of inspiration - the graveyard for example. So he might take those real local references and transplant them to his fictional world. Of course this can only be speculation, but identifying a church with a pentacle in the window which appears on two Fall record covers suggests that MES was familiar with it and that it could be significant as a source of inspiration.
But we don't know.
If "Broken Brothers" can be nailed to something that isn't purely out of MES' imagination, and is local, that would help psychogeographically! Although plausible suggestions about anthrax islands are perhaps a warning against being too parochial.
Prestwich Liberal Club explain the freemason link themselves:
http://www.prestwichliberalclub.co.uk/history/4586979314
The club had an early affiliation with the local Freemasons however due to the need to find a larger meeting hall and catering facilities they relocated and eventually built Sedley Park Lodge. Initially the freemasons group agreed to pay £25 a month room rental at the Liberal Club, this started around November 1921 and ended around 1954. The masons group that came from this were later known as "Sedgley Lodge 4361" of Province of East Lancashire, Consecrated March 30th 1922, Closed March 9th 2012.
In other words, the masons met in the Liberal club for 30+ years.


- 49. | 09/05/2021
Perhaps one day we will discover a real-world analogue for the "Broken Brothers" which might take us in a different direction.
Having said all that, this is just my latest theory - lots of others in my comments!

- 50. | 11/06/2021
"... in S. Latitude 47° 9′, W. Longitude 126° 43′ come upon a coast-line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror—the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, that was built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults...'
".. villagers dance round ... And laugh through twisted mouths" is also very evocative of a Lovecraftian bacchanal of the type seen in the aforementioned story, or by residents of Innsmouth. Lovecraft transposed to Suburban Manchester, in typical MES fashion?

- 51. | 26/11/2021


- 53. | 13/03/2022
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00151xw/the-mystery-of-anthrax-island
Anthrax is a rare disease caused by naturally occurring bacteria which can form spores that are fatal to humans and animals. During the Second World War, government scientists from Porton Down attempted to weaponise anthrax, creating a deadly strain that they then tested on Gruinard Island, an uninhabited remote site off the coast of Scotland.
This proved disastrous for Gruinard and, from 1942 onwards, people were forbidden from setting foot on the island. Signs were erected on the shore and the adjacent mainland, and Gruinard was dubbed The Island of Death or Anthrax Island.
This documentary reveals an extraordinary Scottish story from 1981, when a shadowy group called the Dark Harvest Commandos claimed to have landed on the island and removed 300lbs worth of infected soil.
They wrote a dramatic letter explaining and justifying their actions, which was sent to various newspapers and the BBC. In the letter, they explained their campaign to clean up Gruinard had begun with a package of island soil dumped outside Porton Down.
Nobody knew who they were or if they were serious.

- 54. | 13/03/2022

- 55. | 18/09/2022
Any idea what the backing vocalist (Marc Riley?) is singing under the parts that start, 'Rifleman he say...' and 'The rabbit-killer did not eat...'? Sounds like 'radiator' (though I don't imagine it is).

- 56. | 04/03/2023

- 57. | 05/03/2023
Ye heathens one and all. Have ye not read the holy scriptures?
<< Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey, [Samson] grabbed it and struck down a thousand men. Then Samson said, "With a donkey's jawbone I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey's jawbone I have killed a thousand men." When he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone; and the place was called Ramath Lehi (= "Jawbone Hill"). .>>
(Judges chapter 15 verses 15 - 17)
The subtitle of the song in the Lough Press book is "A wee tale from the Anthrax Isle", which indicates that the "Scotch island" is Gruinard (but MES might also have been thinking of the Wicker Man).