[Intro]
[Stomping drums and circular guitars imitate a crowd moving through narrow streets.]

[Verse 1]
Behind the cooper’s timber wall, a whisper found a seam,
It crossed the yard at supper and returned before the steam.
The butcher heard a child had coughed after Elsbeth passed his door,
By noon the cough became a fit; by dusk, a devil’s roar.
The tailor told the brewer that his needles bent at three,
The brewer blamed a serving girl who laughed beside the quay.
Each telling gained a sharper tooth, each answer lost its shape;
The truth was stripped from house to house till rumour wore its face.

[Chorus - Town Gang Vocals]
Tongues behind the timber, tapping nail by nail,
Building up a gallows from a half-remembered tale.
Tongues behind the timber, trading blame for bread,
Every door grows wider when another name is read.
Tongues behind the timber, let the quiet neighbour fall—
No one hears the first small lie beneath the loudest call.

[Verse 2 - Alternating Town Voices]
“I saw her take the river path.”
“I heard she cursed the cow.”
“She never bowed beside the font.”
“She bows too deeply now.”
“She lends no salt to strangers.”
“She knows what roots can mend.”
“She asked me for the money
That I promised her to send.”

[Verse 3]
The chapel wives exchanged their fears beneath the painted saint;
The guildmen filed their grievances as evidence of taint.
A quarrel over chimney smoke, a fence, a missing hen—
The court received them solemnly and called the stories ten.

[Pre-Chorus]
Say it once in anger; say it twice in fear.
Say it before witnesses, and written truth appears.
Say it with a lowered voice so only God can hear—
Then watch the clerk prepare the page and draw the margin near.

[Chorus - Town Gang Vocals]
Tongues behind the timber, tapping nail by nail,
Building up a gallows from a half-remembered tale.
Tongues behind the timber, trading blame for bread,
Every door grows wider when another name is read.
Tongues behind the timber, let the quiet neighbour fall—
No one hears the first small lie beneath the loudest call.

[Instrumental]
[The guitars trade short phrases like competing witnesses while the rhythm remains in 6/8.]

[Bridge]
We were afraid of fever,
Afraid the grain would fail,
Afraid the war would cross the hill,
Afraid of tax and hail.
But fear without a figure
Will turn against the air,
So we supplied a widow
And fastened terror there.

[Breakdown - Call and Response]
Who wants her field?
Not I. Not I.
Who owes her coin?
Not I. Not I.
Who spoke her name?
The walls replied.
Who sealed her fate?
We stood aside.

[Final Chorus - Town Gang Vocals]
Tongues behind the timber, hammer, beam and nail,
We built ourselves a gallows from a profitable tale.
Tongues behind the timber, buying land with dread,
Every debt grew lighter when another name was read.
Tongues behind the timber, now the ledger held us all—
The first lie seemed so little, but it entered every wall.

[Outro]
[Individual crowd voices vanish until only the clerk’s quill remains in rhythm.]
A rumour in the bakehouse,
A witness at the door,
A sentence in the ledger—
And silence on the floor.
