It was a foul night, dirty and dark When I walked to my local King's Balls. I ordered a pint, found a seat at the bar And decided I'd wait out these squalls. I'd been there five minutes, when down next to me A man, clothed in sack, laid his rear. I looked at his face, but he wore a dark hood; I said nothing, and went back to my beer. Not long had passed, when the old man spoke, His voice cracked and weary with age. He began a story, a woeful tale Of a poor boy, trapped in a cage. This boy he said, was not like normal folk. He was twisted: a mutant, a freak. This boy was locked up in a cramped, filthy cell - For this boy, he was born with a beak. Confined in this dungeon, lightless and dank, Forced to eat whate'er he could find, Alone in his cell, with no friends to speak to, Eventually the boy lost his mind. To the cell came the jailer, to deliver a beating To the boy with a beak for a nose. But the boy had gone crazy - he snapped with his beak At the crotch of the jail-keeper's hose. The jailer lashed out at the child, in pain, With force, to smash the freak's crown. But through air the club swung - the jailer had missed - For the boy from the prison had run. 'How do you know this?' I asked the old man. 'Whence comes a story so wild?' 'I know,' said the man, and took off his hood, 'I know, because I was that child.'