I'm relatively new to writing songs, but this is one of my favorite ones I wrote during quarantine. It's an attempt at an old British narrative ballad style, with hints of the supernatural. Criticism is welcome!

The Ballad of Arthur Robinson

His name was Arthur Robinson
Just seventeen years of age
When he went to fight the Kaiser
Britannia’s war to wage
Off on a grand adventure, he thought
Like the heroes he read about
They’d be back for Christmas dinner, they said
Coming home the Bristol route

But now he sits in trenches, dark and damp
Writing letters they’ll never see
Eating rats they catch on bayonets
And drinking beer gone green
The officers talk in hushéd tones
Of battles won and lost
Of how they gained 10 yards a push
But never of the cost

Now our Arthur was sent on patrol one day                     
When he saw nestled in a tree
A great black raven beck’ning to him
In between the branches three
Arthur cautiously approached the bird
As it swooped down on the ground
And it took the shape of the Alder-King
In a dark and misty crown

The Alder-king offered him a deal
He smelled the fear in Arthur’s breath
That Arthur would survive the war
If he pledged his soul ‘pon death
And our Arthur thought, of his hearth and home
Of his family, and of France
He accepted the Alder-king’s deal
And gave his middle finger as advance

On his way back from patrol that day
He passed the German camp
He saw a priest, giving mass
And the soldiers looked askance
He saw one out there, not with the rest
And he saw Arthur too
They locked their eyes, and raised their guns
Neither knew what to do

Arthur saw that the German boy
No older than himself
Was too missing his middle finger
And his face knew fear itself
They both trembled with hope and fear
Not knowing the path to take
And they both squeezed their iron triggers                              
And the Alder-King, with laughter, quaked.