Daggers of moonlight
Murder the sheets
And the stink of a four dollar room
And Daddy's gone a hunting
For a dime bag schoolboy
Tied up with a yellow balloon

So hush little baby, Daddy must go
I cover you up with a blanket of snow
By the time I make Jersey
You'll be in heaven
In a pretty blue shoe box I know

So sing a song of ten grand
With a pocket full of dough
And I can't take you to Baltimore
Wake God up in Heaven
Have him look down below
There's a little lost angel
Blooming in the snow


Lyrics submitted by morris13

Bronx Lullabye/Smugglers Waltz song meanings
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5 Comments

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  • +1
    General Comment

    This is a very sad song. I think it's about a father singing to his murdered son, he buried the body (by himself or a funeral) and he's going after the murder.

    harland_wirthon March 03, 2009   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    This is the saddest damn song of all time.

    Bexz0ron April 21, 2008   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    The lyrics aren't right. It's: For a dime bag of schoolboy Tied up with a yellow balloon

    So he is not hunting for a person. He is a drug addict looking for a dimebag of cocaine (schoolboy is slang for coke) Balloons are also used to contain illegal narcotics.

    I can only guess about the rest of the song. Maybe in his drug induced state he accidently killed his son (downed in bath tub, starved, etc)

    And I agree. It's one of the saddest song ever. Equally sad is The Tragically Hip's Fiddler's Green.

    smacintyreon June 25, 2009   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    Maybe when he wrote it he was thinking about a hitman who goes to New York City to murder a young drug dealer who fell out of line with a drug lord, or something like that - in that case maybe going out for a dime bag means the hitman is going to buy drugs from the dealer in order to get close and then do the hit - if so - then going out for a 'dime bag of schoolboy' seems to have a secondary allusion to the dealer himself. That just leaves 'pretty blue shoe box' which maybe is a body bag, city-morgue coffin, city-morgue hearse, ambulance, etc.. None which seem to quite fit "pretty blue shoe box" too well.. Seems like there are allusions to him being the father of the dealer - but seems more to me like it's just an allusion to the age difference - not to actual blood relation..

    nottomwaitson July 21, 2010   Link
  • 0
    Song Meaning

    Another Tom Waits murder ballad. With murder foreshadowed in the first lines, the drug-addicted, drug-dealing father first leaves his baby alone in a hotel room while he goes out to score. Then he leaves the baby to die out in the snow since you obviously can't take a baby along to a 10-grand drug deal in Baltimore. Chilling, not the least because of how sweetly it's sung.

    globeoffrogson April 20, 2012   Link

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