Here is my attempt at a transcription from the Alchemy clip, cross-checking place names against Ordnance Survey maps, Google Maps and regional information sites. For the benefit of other non-UKies, I should mention that the song is set in the northern Yorkshire Dales, Richmondshire, UK, east of Kendal and southwest of Darlington. It describes the carrying of a corpse by foot across the Dales to the nearest cemetery, from Keld in the west part to Grinton in the east. The song is also known as "John Blade's Body."

[Deleted per request from Artful Codger. -Joe Offer-]


My transcription of the second line of the second verse is certainly wrong; help appreciated! Of course, corrections to other bits are welcome, too, as well as other versions, source citations--well, you know the drill.

Corpse Way, judging from the song and present day roads, followed the Swale River primarily east and west through the Dales and, roughly at least, correlates to the B6270. However, in the song, the first part of the journey follows a more direct route from Keld to Muker, straight across Kisdon Hill along a path through the Hooker Mill Scar.

According to Peter Robinson, writing in his novel All the Colors of Darkness:

Saint Andrew's, a beautiful, small twelfth-century Norman church with its square tower and arched door porch, was where the Corpse Way ended, Banks remembered.

Before Muker Church was built in 1580, Saint Andrew's had the only consecrated ground in Upper Swaledale, and people had to carry their dead in large baskets all the way from Muker or Keld sometimes, along the Corpse Way to Grinton. At some of the bridges on the way, there were old flat stones that used to act as resting places, where you could put down the coffin for a few moments and have a bit to eat and a spot of ale. Some of the travelers were no doubt drunk in charge of a coffin when they finally got to Grinton, and perhaps even one or two coffins got dropped along the way.

The 1580 date makes me all the more curious about the provenance of this song; is it just a historical pastiche? Would they still have been foot-porting bodies from Keld to Grinton by the time the stone inn The Punch Bowl was built in Feetham in the 17th century--I'd been guessing this was the inn mentioned in the song (and that they'd probably have eaten and drunk at The King's Head in Gunnerside as well).