Mistress of the Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl)

Necromancy.

I've always wondered what this song is about. There's several things I've come up with.

My first inclination since Albert Bouchard was the writer, and he tends to lean toward sexual references, is that Quicklime may be a substitute for quick time girl. It says she "plies her trade" so she's getting paid for something. I was thinking that sailors "where coast guard crews still take their leave" hit her up for sex behind the bushes. "Where the plants grow strong and tall Behind the bush there lurks a girl Who makes them strong and tall" could be a reference to their erections. Mistress of the "salmon salt" and "reduction of many from the one" have always seemed like code for semen to me. Perhaps they spill their semen and feed the plants that way?

She perhaps is killing her victims too, since there are ripe and ready graves. With laughter and a little step, perhaps you fall into a hole in the ground?

There's one other literal possibility. Quicklime is an actual substance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_oxide "Because of vigorous reaction of quicklime with water, quicklime causes severe irritation when inhaled or placed in contact with moist skin or eyes. Inhalation may cause coughing, sneezing, labored breathing. It may then evolve into burns with perforation of the nasal septum, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting. Although quicklime is not considered a fire hazard, its reaction with water can release enough heat to ignite combustible materials." She could be burning her victims to death with quicklime, or it could even be a drug dealer reference. Since the lyrics mention gasping, and choked to death perhaps they're smoking something intended to be a drug, and it's actually poison, or perhaps they're just junkies dying from her drugs. Also, Quicklime is used to make cement, so she could be burying victims in cement too.

Another thing about the plants growing tall, is that she could be feeding actual plants with the corpses of her victims.

I believe she's a prostitute, and she lures sailors in with sex behind the bushes, and she kills them, and feeds the plants. I don't really think the drug reference makes sense if they are sailors. Sailors don't generally go off on drug binges.

I wish someone would give a definitive explanation to this song, as it's always made me wonder.

"Within a mile of that duke's joint" should be "that juke joint", and the last few lines should be as follows;

It comes as if by schedule A harvest of limbs, of arms and of legs The toes that crawl, The knees that jerk The necks like swans that seem to turn As if inclined to gasp or pray

Yes, I do think this song is about a prostitute who murders her victims, but before I really analysed it, I always assumed it was about growing marijuana! "where the plants grow strong and tall" (instead of using slow acting limestone which must be mixed into the soil a year in advance, some people try to use quicklime or another fast acting base, which usually leads to dead plants.
"By harvest time she knows the score Ripe and ready to the eye Yet rotten somehow to the core"

A serial killer who buries his or her corpses in the garden.

Since New Orleans has a very prominent section of town called The Garden District and within that district are some very famous above ground cemeteries...and since quicklime hastens the decomposition of bodies? Can't help but wonder if the Quicklime girls is tied into death somehow.

Quicklime girl, she disposes of coast guard men's bodies who visit the Duke's whorehouse. Burying them in a garden area, she dissolves the bodies with quicklime. The bodies then fertilize the plants, which she harvests in springtime for "Salmon Salt" which I take to mean dill, aka Anethum GRAVEolens.

I believe that "Mistress of the Salmon Salt" and "Quicklime Girl" refer to her using quicklime to prepare human limbs for consumption by the plants, as we use salt to cure salmon for consumption by ourselves. A whole salmon packed in salt can look somewhat like a human limb packed with quicklime.

"A harvest of life a harvest of death One body of life one body of death"

A cycle in which life is "harvested" to nourish a different form of life. It is in some respects a natural cycle of life. However, (in this case) it is also extremely sinister:

"Ripe and ready to the eye Yet rotten somehow to the core"

[Edit: To add an additional reference]

In the last verse the last four lines should be five and are;

It comes as if by schedule A harvester lifts his arms to the rain The toes that crawl, The knees that jerk The necks like swans that seem to turn As if inclined to gasp or pray

In the last verse the last four lines should be five and are;

It comes as if by schedule A harvester lifts his arms to the rain The toes that crawl, The knees that jerk The necks like swans that seem to turn As if inclined to gasp or pray