Dead Songs in Depth

    
Mason's Children
w: Hunter m: Garcia, Weir, Lesh
AGDL: http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/maso.html
LASF: http://www.whitegum.com/songfile/MASONSCH.HTM

 
  

    
Mason's Children 
Lyrics: Robert Hunter
Music: Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh

Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission.

Mason died on Monday
We bricked him in the wall
All his children grew and grew
They never grew so tall before
May they never grow so tall again

We dug him up on Tuesday
He'd hardly aged a day
Taught us all he ever knew
We never knew so much before
We may never know so much again

Mason was a mighty man
A mighty man was he
All he said, when dead and gone
Don't you weep for me

The wall collapsed on Wednesday
We chalked it up to fate
All his children ran and hid
We never hid so well before
Swore we'd never show our face again

Thursday came, then Friday
With fires tall and bright
Mason's children cooked the stew
And cleaned up when the feast was through
Swore we'd never had such times before

Take me to the Reaper Man
To pay back what was loaned
If he's in some other land
Write it off as stoned
  

    
I've never really known what to make of the lyrics of Mason's
Children, with its hints of ritual cannibalism (I've always thought
that the main ingredient in the stew was, in fact, Mason),
resurrection, karmic cycles, acid dreams, etc.  It's a *very* strange
song, it seems to me.

Sure rocks, though!
  

    
Think "Stranger in a Strange LAnd."
  

    
Hm ... maybe I'll have to reread that book ... it's probably been 35
years since I took any kind of look at it!

Almost all I remember of it is "grok" and how annoying I find it when
people use that word for real :-)
  

    
Heh! And yet you stayed on the WELL.
  

    
Even though it's sometimes a challenge!

David, since I'm now somewhat Heinlein-impaired (though as a teenager
I read just about everything by him), could you say a little bit more
about the Mason's Children--Stranger In A Strange Land connection?
  

    
In case David's in Fresno, I seem to recall Michael Valentine Smith
being boiled in a soup and consumed by his followers after his death.
Extreme grokking, or something. 

But admittedly Moson's Children had not yet been written when I last
read that book!
  

    
Valentine Michael Smith, but yeah.
  

    
That's what I get for trying to remember books I read in college!
  

    
The classical antecedent is Tantalus and Pelops. 

There's a whole conspiracy theory about the Dead being freemason
satanists, archived here
http://web.archive.org/web/20030321091348/http://pub8.ezboard.com/ffreemasonry
watchfrm2.showMessage?topicID=164.topic

(Thank goodness for blogging. Two days after I linked to it, the
Internet Archive had a copy, and now the original message board has
been taken down "for privacy violations")
  

    
Actually, 

Robert Hunter's lyrics abound with Masonic references. First is his
song "The Mason's Children". In addition there is his hit "Friend of
the Devil", with the repeated refrain "A friend of the Devil is a
friend of mine". In addition there is the Dead "signature" tune called
"Dark Star", which is a well-known satanic reference. I could easily go
ON AND ON AND ON with masonic quotes from Robert Hunter's lyrics, but
you can go to any lyric site on the web and look them up yourself. I
doubt you could find one song by this guy that doesn't have some kind
of masonic reference in it.


is a good parody of the way Dead Head's sometimes get that "we are
everywhere" vibe from the most innocuous inputs, like "I heard a
character on a soap opera say, 'Believe it or not'! Total Dead
reference!" (channeling usenet there for a moment).
  

    
That's great, Xian! "Believe it or not"--truly a sign that someone is into
the Dead.
  

    
The historical, literary, lyrical, philosophical, musical lineage of
certain concepts, lines of thought from the Greek Mystery Rites,
Gnostics, Knights Templar, to the Masons and various and manifold
off-shoots via Age o' Enlightenment are so vast and intertwined, it's
hard to tell exactly where they sprang from prior to getting writ down
or sung by the Dead, Hunter, Dylan, or even Ripley and the founding
dads of the US o' A... well, perhaps that's part of why they called
them Mystery Rites, way back when in "Pagan" Greece

The words Mystery and Literary had have many meanings over the past
many centuries.They all revolved or had revolve around them lyric, wit,
and music.

Oooops... I'm starting to channel Pythagorean devotees in a dance of
twirlers.
  

    <scribbled by bpenney Wed 24 Sep 03 11:02>
  

    
yeah.  hunter's lyrics are handcuffs to me.  the more it clicks the
furthur i go and the tighter it gets.
  

    
... and the rounder it gets, the faster it goes, and...
  

    
Sometimes I hear Hunter's words differently than the official version,
but they still seem to make sense.

One of the examples from Mason's (admittedly, possibly just of
mishearing or overanalyzing if that's possible - I'm not sure it is!)
is the line
"Take me to the Reaper man" heard, punningly, as also being take me to
the Repo Man.
That they didn't always seem to be singing the same thing at the same
time, helps.
  

    
As for the cannibalism references in Mason's, has anybody seen the
film Fellini's Satyricon?

Although it's been years since I've seen it and this may be the same
story of Telymachus that someone else has already cited. 
  

    
I said Telemachus, what I meant was Tantalus and Pelops... Sorry about
that, I'm rusty on my Greek mythology.
  

    
My uncle, then a Harvard Professor, took me to see Satyricon when I
was 12 or 13. Possibly ruined my life ;-)

My Mom was outraged when she found out where we were. I dug the film
(I've seen it a couple times since it came out on video), but don't get
the connection to Satyricon. Am I being dense, or is just the
cannibalism reference?
  

    
I now think I overreached looking for a Satyricon connection; there
probably is none other than that one scene (and free-association.)
In my defense I was also thinking about The Barbed Wire Whipping Party
at the time I posted. ...Pretty strange "lyrics" there.
  

    
Yup!

Thanks for the email and food for thought and reflection.