“Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.”
The mockingjays begin to alter their songs as they become aware of my new offering.
“Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.”
I have the birds’ attention now. In one more verse, surely they will have captured the melody, as it’s
simple and repeats four times with little variation.
“Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run, so we’d both be free.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.”
A hush in the trees. Just the rustle of leaves in the breeze. But no birds, mockingjay or other. Peeta’s
right. They do fall silent when I sing. Just as they did for my father.
“Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.”
We didn’t sing it anymore, my father and I, or even speak of it. After he died, it used to come back to
me a lot. Being older, I began to understand the lyrics. At the beginning, it sounds like a guy is trying to
get his girlfriend to secretly meet up with him at midnight. But it’s an odd place for a tryst, a hanging tree,
where a man was hung for murder. The murderer’s lover must have had something to do with the killing,
or maybe they were just going to punish her anyway, because his corpse called out for her to flee. That’s
weird obviously, the talking-corpse bit, but it’s not until the third verse that “The Hanging Tree”begins to
get unnerving. You realize the singer of the song is the dead murderer. He’s still in the hanging tree. And
even though he told his lover to flee, he keeps asking if she’s coming to meet him. The phraseWhere I
told you to run, so we’d both be free is the most troubling because at first you think he’s talking about
when he told her to flee, presumably to safety. But then you wonder if he meant for her to run to him. To
death. In the final stanza, it’s clear that that’s what he’s waiting for. His lover, with her rope necklace,
hanging dead next to him in the tree.
_MOCKINGJAY CHAPTER 8