Lyrics

(text by Birthe Noer Myers)

The Pearl Fisher

Down in the South Sea an oyster lay,
he was not very happy that day.
"Pinctata Maxima" was his name,
but he did not know of his fame.

A grain of sand skipped in to stay,
it stuck and would not go away.
It bothered him, it itched and hurt,
he wished he'd been much more alert.

"A pearl," he sighed, he'd always tried
to flush out tiny things that dried
on his soft and sensitive mollusk skin,
and now he had let one in!

The only thing that could ease the pain
It was to coat again and again,
the fleck of sand with oyster slime
which then made a pearl sublime.

The fishers came and went below
Where all the oysters lay on show.
The one who found him was a boy
who liked to sing, he sang for joy

when he saw the pearl's magnificence;
so smooth, so costly, so immense!
He rose out of the Southern sea
And sang, 'Now I shall be free!"

It could have been white or black as night,
but it was pink and shiny, and it might
have graced an opulent and golden ring
on the hand of a queen or a king.

The fishers got a heap of gold
when the boy's giant pearl was sold,
and the finder of "Pinctata Maxima"
had a career at the opera.