Shankill Butchers

I was at a gig by The Decemberists last Saturday night in Vicar Street.

For those of you who may not know The Decemberists, they are an American band, who are well known for their unique approach to lyrics - taking their themes from things like Japanese Folktales, Shakespeare, old Irish legends (The Tain), and most particularly any type of Victoriana. So it's not unusual to hear tales of murder, rape, robbery, abduction, poverty, death and tales from the high seas or the seedy docks. You'll hear words like "saber," "knickers," "pistol," "chimbley," "mariner," "roustabout," and "boyo" being sung as if they are words we all use every day, and somehow they are able to sing about their grim macabre themes in their folky way and have the effect of being unexpectedly charming and uplifting.

On Saturday they did a song called "Shankill Butchers" from their most recent album. It was beautifully and seductively sung; a dark lullaby you could readily imagine a rag-clad mother putting her child to sleep with in a modest and smoky cottage in some vague past safely distant from the present.

What has me freaked out about the song (however much I may love it artistically), is that it is not set in a remote place or past. Some of the Shankill Butchers who were convicted of 19 horrific murders - and thought to be responsible for more than 30 - are out of prison and living in Northern Ireland as I write. The first verse of the song goes:

The Shankill butchers ride tonight
You better shut your windows tight
They're sharpening their cleavers and their knives
And taking all their whisky by the pint
Cause everybody knows
If you dont mind your mother's words
A wicked wind will blow
Your ribbons from your curls
Everybody moan everybody shake
The Shankill Butchers wanna catch (/cut?) you awake


[View a live recording of the song HERE]

It is unclear whether Colin Meloy sings "catch you awake" or "cut you awake." The Shankill Butchers generally abducted people around midnight when the streets were relatively deserted, and generally subjected them to unthinkable torture. If the lyric is the latter, it conjures up images of the fate of one of the Shankill Butchers early victims, Tom Madden, who was hanged upside down from a beam and skinned alive. According to the Ulster-Scots Online Community website, pathologists recorded that 147 separate incisions were made.

There are people alive now who have images of this horror indelibly etched on their memories. For this reason alone, the theme of the song borders on the offensive, but I won't go so far as to say that that border has been crossed. Either way, I am probably not qualified to judge, but what I will say is that I cannot remember a song that has had more of a provocative and chilling impact on me.