Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed (1560-1614) was a Hungarian noblewoman whose family owned land in Hungary and Transylvania. She is thought to have contributed to the Dracula myth due to the geography of her crimes as well as her practice of torturing, killing, and allegedly bathing in the blood of virgin peasant girls to maintain the beauty of her skin. She is thought to have killed up to 300 adolescent girls, starting with the peasantry but then moving on to the gentry, who were lured to the castle to learn etiquette from the Countess.
This one's for Elizabeth.
lyrics
Well, because the blood improved my skin
It really did improve my skin
I’m expected to have good skin
With the portraits
Countless Countess events
It really did improve my skin
This is an objective fact
I borrowed their beautiful skin
What were they going to use it for
in their dark barns and dead fields
Well, because it was inside my skin
The hunger was inside my skin
To make them feel something beyond
Just their commonplace
Their dreary day gray
Pain is full of bright colors
Reds and oranges and purples and pinks
I filled them up with these colors
And they filled me up in return
What more were they going to do
In their dark barns and their dead fields?
Why not do something important
in the castle
with the Countess?
CHORUS:
They aren’t real, you know.
They aren’t real.
They’re so small from up here.
They’re pretend from up here.
They’re like dolls, you know.
They’re like poorly made dolls.
With shabby old dollclothes
And tiny rough hands.
They don’t have anything
There are thousands of them
All the same, all identical
Crawling over each other
They’re not people, exactly
They’re not real
Not like you or like me.
Not like you or like me.
Not like me.
Not like me.
They have sealed me into this tower
Thin white with one window that opens to sky
I can hear the armies of farmers they’re weeping for daughters on bath days they’ll never forget--
But I just--
It’s so funny--
Nobody cared until OUR girls went missing
The noble girls
The rich pretty girls
Nobody lifted a finger to stop me
They know
What you and I know:
CHORUS:
They aren’t real, you know.
They aren’t real.
They’re so small from up here.
They’re pretend from up here.
They’re like dolls, you know.
They’re like poorly made dolls.
With shabby old dollclothes
And tiny rough hands.
They don’t have anything
There are thousands of them
All the same, all identical
Crawling over each other
They’re not people, exactly
They’re not real
Not like you or like me.
Not like you or like me.
Not like me.
Not like me.
credits
from Angelmakers: Songs for Female Serial Killers,
released August 8, 2018
Molly Rice: lyrics, music
Milia Ayache: vocals, acoustic guitar
Zorahna: electric guitar, background vocals
Michele Dunlap: drums
Eva Lawitts’s latest album as Stimmerman offers up a dozen tracks of jagged, grunge-informed alt-rock with an experimental edge. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 6, 2020
