Star Wars Shanty #3 - Running Down from Kessel

Описание: The Star Wars Shanty Project: Shanties and other songs from the Star Wars Universe.

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"The galactic shanty tradition was hardly limited to military vessels and legitimate merchant crews; many a pirate or smuggler’s song has survived through the ages. Perhaps most well known is ‘Running Down from Kessel,’ a loading shanty dedicated to one of the most infamous cargos in explored space: spice.

Traditionally, smugglers making the run from the Pyke Syndicate’s mines on Kessel took a circuitous route, plotting a twenty parsec course that kept them well clear of ‘The Maw,’ a black hole cluster so dense it was thought unnavigable. But when Han Solo (for reasons disputed by historians) first proved it possible to fly directly through the cluster - a distance of only twelve parsecs - many other crews took sudden interest in a new route that, regardless of its danger, could keep them clear of Imperial entanglement and cut their delivery time almost in half.

It soon became a point of pride amongst regular spice carriers to fly the Maw variant of the Kessel Run; some smugglers even seeing it as a rite of passage. This tradition was short-lived, however. Barely ten galactic years after Solo’s first flight, the Pyke Syndicate issued an edict forbidding any further attempts, after one of their accountants crunched the numbers and realized that they were losing three times more spice to crews making foolhardy (and invariably fatal) runs through the Maw than they had ever lost to Imperial seizure."

LYRICS
(Copyright Arthur Rowan)

Oh ever since I was a child upon me mother's knee,
(Hoist her up! Stow her down! Look out for the law.)
I found a life of smugglin' was the only life for me.
(And we're running down from Kessel through the Maw.)

I've carried every contraband to ports around the rim...
But the one that's most reliable is good old glitterstim...

Chorus
See it glimmer, shimmer, glittering and raw.
Hoist her up! Stow her down! Look out for the law.
Then push off from the shore and punch it to the Core,
We're running down from Kessel through the Maw.

There's Imps in every sector set to blow us from the sky...
But we'll be riding lanes that lesser pilots couldn't fly...

There's not a route more dangerous to get us to the core...
But every risk is worth it for the credits that we'll score...

Chorus

A dense and deadly graveyard of many a dying sun...
And charting it's a cluster in far more ways than one...

Now Solo made the trip in twelve, that surely took some skill...
I say twelve may be a short trip, but ten is shorter still!

Chorus

Some get off on ryll or scarn, deathsticks or on spike...
But there's no better high for me than running for the Pyke...

And we have never been the sort to take the long way round...
So hoist her up and haul away! We're Coreward bound!

Chorus