Is there a recording of this available online? David Kidman did a great job of this song in the Singaround today.
The song is featured on Cockersdale's "Prospect Providence" and on "Picking Sooty Blackberries." There is a Cockersdale Channel on YouTube. It has these albums: Doin' the Manch, Wide Open Skies, & ...Ben Around for Years, which are the same 3 albums I have in my collection - but alas, no Vampires.

-Joe-

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Here are the Marsden lyrics from the Picking Sooty Blackberries Songbook. They're almost the same as the Kipling text Jim Dixon posted above. I'll mark the different wording in BOLD.

THE VAMPIRE
(Rudyard Kipling, as interpreted by Keith Marsden)

A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you and I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair
We called her the woman who did not care,
But the fool he called her his lady fair
(Even as you and I!)

Oh the years we waste and the tears we waste
And the sweat of the brow and hand
They belong to the woman who never knew why,
and never would understand.

A fool there was and his goods he spent
(Even as you and I!)
Honour and faith and a sure intent
But it wasn't the least what the lady meant,
But a fool must follow his natural bent
(Even as you and I!)

Oh the years we waste and the tears we waste
And the sweat of the brow and hand
They belong to the woman who never knew why,
and never would understand.

So the fool was stripped to his foolish hide
(Even as you and I!)
Which he might have seen when she cast him aside—
But it isn't on record that the lady tried
So some of him lived but the most of him died—
(Even as you and I!)

Oh the years we waste and the tears we waste
And the sweat of the brow and hand
They belong to the woman who never knew why,
and never would understand.

*Oh the toil we lost and the spoil we lost,
And the excellent things we planned.
They belong to a woman who never knew why,
And never would understand.

*To the tune of the chorus.


I'll transcribe a MIDI on request. -Joe-