Chorus:
She says she doesn’t walk the night,
For some unknown place to go,
But the stained and muddy velvet,
Yes, the tattered, wet velvet
Tells him all he needs to know.

The nighttime hides the daytime’s truth,
And it shelters its own lies.
It hides the lies of others
Who would walk beneath its skies.
But the night cannot obscure,
And it cannot bring redress
For punishment inflicted
O’er a stained and muddy dress.

(chorus)

She doesn’t know the place she goes,
She doesn’t know what she does there.
She only knows, come morning,
Dried leaves are tangled in her hair.
Her slippers bear the telltale mud,
So cruelly brown by light of day—
She only knows wet velvet
Always gives her words away.

(chorus)

Though she denies she wanders when
The sun has gone to sleep,
Her lord does not believe that she
Doesn’t know she left the keep.
And even when he locked her up,
And she was there at morning’s light,
Her clothing, wet and muddy,
Showed she’d walked the woods all night.

(chorus)

He tried to follow close at hand
As the trail grew dark and steep,
Wondering how his love could go
That way if she were walking in her sleep.
The night was dark and moonless,
And her dress was ghostly white—
Despite his careful tracking,
His wife was swallowed by the night.

(chorus)

She comes into the chamber now,
As the Sun King lifts his head—
He watches her undressing
Behind the curtains on the bed.
His heart is racing quickly
As he stares at the leaves and mud,
For now the grey, wet velvet
Is dark and soaked with blood.

(chorus)