Quotes / The Dead Can Dance

Zig, zig, zig, Death in cadence,

Striking a tomb with his heel,

Death at midnight plays a dance-tune,

Zig, zig, zag, on his violin.

The winter wind blows, and the night is dark;

Moans are heard in the linden trees.

White skeletons pass through the gloom,

Running and leaping in their shrouds.

Zig, zig, zig, each one is frisking,

You can hear the cracking of the bones of the dancers.

A lustful couple sits on the moss

So as to taste long lost delights.

Zig zig, zig, Death continues

The unending scraping on his instrument.

A veil has fallen! The dancer is naked.

Her partner grasps her amorously.

The lady, it's said, is a marchioness or baroness

And her green gallant, a poor cartwright.

Horror! Look how she gives herself to him,

Like the rustic was a baron.

Zig, zig, zig. What a saraband!

They all hold hands and dance in circles.

Zig, zig, zag. You can see in the crowd

The king dancing among the peasants.

But hist! All of a sudden, they leave the dance,

They push forward, they fly; the cock has crowed.

Oh what a beautiful night for the poor world!

Long live death and equality!

—Danse Macabre by Henri Cazalis

One night, stormy and full of thunder,

You hear a rumbling from the grave

When suddenly the ground is torn asunder

And the dead begin to wave.

It's the night! Night of the dancing dead!

It's the night! Night of the dancing dead!

They rise up from the world down under

And you stop and stare as in a trance

You eyes grow big as with wonder

As all of them begin to dance.

It's the night! Night of the dancing dead!

It's the night! Night of the dancing dead!

They mambo, tango, shimmy and shake

They do the foxtrot, quickstep, jive

Twirling around at their own wake

Dancing, staying not alive.

It's the night! Night of the dancing dead!

It's the night! Night of the dancing dead!

—Zed Word Jamboree, "Night of the Dancing Dead":

Carpals, tarsals, vertebrae, that's us clicking on parade

I move without any muscles, my skull's a cavernous hall

Tendons are made for pulling, my friend, I don't need them at all!

—Skeletons on Parade, Ludo

And whosoever shall be found

Without the soul for getting down

Must stand and face the hounds of hell

And rot inside a corpse's shell

—Michael Jackson,Thriller

Miss Flitworth: I take it you do dance, Mr. Bill Door?
Mr. Bill Door: Famed for it, Miss Flitworth.

— Reaper Man

And they were singing

Back to back, ghoul, belly to belly

Well, I don't give a damn 'cause I'm stone dead already

Back to back, oh oh oh, belly to belly

It's a zombie jamboree

— "Zombie Jamboree", Rockapella cover

As the sob of the breeze

Sweeps over the trees

And the mists lie low on the fen

From grey tomb-stones

Are gathered the bones

That once were women and men

And away they go

With a mop and a mow

To the revel that ends too soon

For cockcrow limits our holiday

The dead of the night’s high noon!

Ha! ha!

Then is the ghosts’ high noon!

— "When the Night Wind Howls" from Ruddigore, Gilbert and Sullivan

At midnight in the museum hall,
The fossils gathered for a ball,
There were no drums or saxophones,
But just the clatter of their bones,
Rolling, rattling carefree circus,
Of mammoth polkas and mazurkas,
Pterodactyls and brontosauruses
Sang ghostly prehistoric choruses,
Amid the mastodonic wassail
I caught the eye of one small fossil,
"Cheer up sad world," he said and winked,
"It's kind of fun to be extinct."

—Ogden Nash, Fossils

Aaron stretched himself, shook himself, got up, took a step of two, and began to dance a jig. With his old bones rattling, and his yellow teeth snapping, and his bald head waggling, and his arms flip-flopping, around and around the room he went.

The fiddler played and Aaron danced. Up and down the floor he danced. Witrh his long legs clocking, and his kneebones clocking, he skipped and pranced around the room.

How that dead man danced!

Crickety-crack, down and back, the dead man went hopping. Every time he jumped he cracked, and every time he cracked, another dry bone dropped on the floor.

—Alvin Schwartz, Aaron Kelley's Bones

When the "G" falls off the graveyard sign...

—A popular meme

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