Saline the Salt Lake Queen

I guess I always assumed it was about madness and salt poisoning... ultimately death. Swollen up with pride eluding to bloating post death. Crows being associated with scavenging explaining why it's her only friend. Bromide is also found in salt water.

It's written about a REALLY salty woman, duh ;)

Ok, there could be multiple layers of meaning, Rasputina loves to do that, but I think you guys are overlooking the obvious. I think Rasputina was just having fun making a story out of these lyrics based on simple scence. It all makes sense if you look at the periodic table of elements and know a little science facts.

Saline, as mentioned in the song is literally just that... Saline. Everything in the song is about the geological/chemical properties of salt and related chemicals. Consider these points:

"In a prehistoric dried-up lake A million years after the last earthquake There lived a little girl who loved to bake The only thing she made was cake

And all she used was salt That's all she had - it's not her fault Saline, the salt lake queen"

In this first stanza they are talking about an area like the great salt lake in Utah.

"She used a rudimentary substance for An ingredient that she could pour Into a chalice she carved out of stone Her only friend, it was a big black crow

That flew with love He would fly high above Look back at her below"

Little known fact, crows love salt and salty foods (though too much is bad for them.) There are so many crows around the salt lake area in Utah that the city passed an ordance to allow them to be hunted to cut down on thier numbers!

"Oh Saline Only seventeen Swollen up with pride"

Chlorine is #17 on the periodic table. from wikipedia: "The most common compound of chlorine, sodium chloride (common salt), has been known since ancient times."

"Oh Saline Under desert skies She's a bromide She makes green fire in a tunnel in the woods And she's got yellow eyes"

Here they are literally making a reference to her being a bromide (salt family.) Also, boron compounds turn flames green. I don't know the last reference about yellow eyes, but I bet if I dug deep enough I'd find that certian salt/boron family crystals have yellow rings in them or something.. The rest is just repeat and lyrics thrown in for interest.

The women in Rasputina are wicked smart, and this is just the kind of clever idea they would use to spin out a "story" in a song. I'm surprised no one else noticed it!

I love this song, this is probably my favorite song off Frustration Plantation next to If Your Kisses Won't Can't Hold The Man You Love... To lyrics are following and wstrange, yet thought-provoking and the cello is amazingly distorted. I heard this and thought of the Smashing Pumkins. =P haha... Go Rasputina!

A bromide also refers to a boring person, but your interpretation makes more sense, SiouxsieKitten. The lyrics are quite like a strange dream.

The black crow looked into her face

Great song

Bromide can also mean ideal picture of a woman.

Personally, both SiouxsieKitten's interpretation and the interpretation regarding Gianna Jessen make sense. Perhaps if you put them together, what you might get is a song that involves a teenage girl who is pregnant and is in a state of disbelief; therefore, a bad dream. And then of course the whole saline abortion features in.

"big black crow"

BBC

might be alluding to something else there...

This is one of the songs that confused me at first. I think a lot of Melora's lyrics are very subjective, and she writes them especially like that. As a true performer, I believe she writes a song that inspires cryptic thought in her fans without giving too much mystery away about the thoughts that inspire her lyrics.

However, I also believe most of her songs tie to a certain central theme that may not be easily discerned without looking at certain symbolism. In a lot of Melora's songs, I believe she draws inspiration from real life events, without being specific.

Considering however that most of the lyrics seen above are actually wrong though, I don't think I have to necessarily put too much thought into my interpretation if that is the standard I have to follow.

I think this song could possibly be about abortion, as others have mentioned above. This song could possibly be inspired by Gianna Jessens situation, or otherwise from the history of instillation abortions, and, this is going out on a limb, but possibly under the influence of the catholic church, in which many young women who fell pregnant were forced to have abortios against their will. There's simply too many references to this for me to think this song is about otherwise. I'll explain my thoughts below.

-"There lived a little girl who loved to bake / the only thing she made was cake" - A bun in the oven perhaps?

-"She used a rudimentary substance for / An ingredient that she could pour / Into a chalice she carved out of stone / Her only friend, it was a big black crow / That flew with love / He would fly high above / Look back at her below" - Salt is a basic substance found commonly in nature - the chalice is her womb, and her "only friend" is a big black crow, My mother, and a lot of other women around her age who went to catholic schools would often report of the nuns whisking away the girls who would perform "immoral" acts such as insubordination, sex, and pregnancy into solitude to "council and help" these girls into making the right decisions in the eyes of the lord and the outside world.

Nuns would often be referred to as crows because of their black and white habits and savagery. "Flying with love" could refer to the traditional contradiction of the whole "God is Love" quote that was prominently displayed in many schools above the blackboards in a classroom; the same room where nuns would whip the students who were not learning to their satisfaction with a cane. The crow flying "high above" could reference the spiritual superiority of a nun making the decision over a 17 year old girl having an abortion and her feeling of powerlessness about the whole situation. I mean, a girl of the church bringing up a baby until adulthood without a father is much more shameful than a girl disappearing for a couple of months, and coming back a broken shell of a human, with a void in her abdomen in which life was growing before.

"Only 17 and swollen up with pride" - pride being the consequence of a sexual act leading to pregnancy...

"She makes green fire in a tunnel of thorns" - Well, you got the lyrics wrong up there... Fire in a tunnel in the woods? Listen to the song again. Thorns and woods are two separate words. But seriously - the tunnel of thorns must be the womb, and the fire must be the saline solution. I've read that a saline solution "burns" the foetus from the inside and out.

But, as I said before, the lyrics are subjective. This is just my interpretation.

Gross, huh? :-P