For Jan Marshall who died of lung cancer May 2012. An amazing woman with an amazing spirit, a hard life tenaciously fought. An old Gypsy legend states that a person dies 3 deaths - the first when their body ceases to live, the second when they are buried into the earth and the third when people stop speaking their name. A gypsy and a legend throughout the Top End of this land, she’ll never be forgotten.

Lyrics

GYPSY’S LAMENT
By the time you hear this you’ll be gone
Looking down as the future lives on
Seeing all of your children as one
Tied up with the strings of your love
You’ve been riding this road for so long
One last time saying I’m moving on
So sing Gypsy Jan Marshall my butterfly rover goodbye

But a child abandoned and lost
You struggled on against the odds
A child of your own at sixteen
What’s in store and what does it mean
Then a man with that look in his eye
Give a lifetime then leave him or die
So sing Gypsy Jan Marshall my butterfly rover goodbye

With the hard work of bitter sweet hands
And the promise of unexplored lands
From the sugar cane fields of the east
Through the desert and in to the heat
Bar to bar, job to job, town to town
Don’t look back and don’t ever look down
Just sing Gypsy Jan Marshall my butterfly rover goodbye

The first time your blood and your bones
Now released from their shackles of stone
The second time ashes and dust
To the earth we entrust
The third time the memory is gone
But for tonight your story lives on
So sing Gypsy Jan Marshall my butterfly rover goodbye

The third time the memory is gone
But for tonight your story lives on
So sing Gypsy Jan Marshall we’ll never stop saying your name