I Will Follow You into the Dark - Verse 2

In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue as she told me,
Son, fear is the heart of love, so I never went back


Hello and welcome to Learning English with Lyrics, the podcast where we break down English language song lyrics to help improve your grammar, vocabulary, and general knowledge of English. I am your host Jake, and today we will be discussing verse 2 of the song "I Will Follow You into the Dark" by Death Cab for Cutie. If you haven't listened to the first two episodes of this series, I recommend pausing here, and going back to listen to the those first. If you've never listened to this podcast, there is also an episode titled "Introduction", that I recommend listening to before anything else. Alright, let's get started with verse number 2.

It starts out simply enough. "In Catholic school, a vicious as Roman rule". This is the beginning of a longer phrase he will continue in the next line. He's introducing a story, by telling us where it takes place, when it takes place, and describing it a little bit. Seems like a lot packed into half of a sentence doesn't it? While this introduction does work grammatically, it can be a little bit confusing. A longer, but more descriptive way to say it, would be to say "When I was in Catholic school (which I would describe as vicious, like ancient Roman rule)". He's describing a place (Catholic school) and a time (When I was in Catholic school). So we can assume this was in the past, when he was school age). To describe something by saying it's as "vicious as Roman rule", he's saying that they are as vicious as ancient Roman rulers were. That it to say, very vicious. But what does vicious mean?

Vicious is an interesting word. Someone or something that is vicious is someone or something who is very, very mean. In fact, they are not only mean, but very aggressive with how mean they are. They are usually dangerous. They are maybe even cruel. It is not a positive word at all, and rarely if ever can be used in a positive way.

A "vicious" attack, is an aggressive and harmful attack. A "vicious" dog is a dog that is dangerous. It will probably attack you and it is not safe to be around. A vicious person is a person who is mean, cruel, and maybe short-tempered. They are harsh with their words and their actions. In short, when the singer was in Catholic school, he was treated in a very mean and probably cruel way. We'll see more of that later on in this song.

Ok, now that the easy part is out of the way, let's get into the difficult part.

"I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black".

There's a lot to unpack here, that may not be completely obvious. I want to start with just the word "got". You're probably most familiar with the usage of the word "got" as in "to get" or "to obtain" something. For example, "I went to the store and got 3 apples" or "I got 20 presents for my birthday!". You'll notice that while in both of those examples, I obtained something (apples and presents), the first one is active (I got 3 apples or in other words, I bought 3 apples, or I took 3 apples, or I grabbed 3 apples) while the second one is passive (I got 20 presents, or I received 20 presents or I was given 20 presents). It's this second way of using "got" that is closest to what's being said in the song.

You can "get" things, such as presents or candy or money, but you can also "get" actions, things that happened to you. I'll give some examples. I could say "I was walking in the street and a car hit me!" That's perfectly acceptable and grammatically correct. But what I would actually say though, is "I walking in the street and I got hit by a car!" It's a less active way of saying something, and shows that it was not voluntary. I didn't want to get hit by a car, my goal was not to be hit by a car. Even though it is passive (something happening TO you), using the word "got" instead of something like "was" can hint a bit that you deserved whatever happened to you. Or at the very least, you did something that resulted in it happening. I wasn't trying to get hit by a car, but by walking in the road, I got myself hit by a car. There's a bit of self-blame there, although there doesn't have to be.

Another common example would be to say something like "I got punched in the face". If you wanted to add WHO punched you in the face, you could say "I got punched in the face, BY my brother". This is exactly what we see in the song. He GOT his knuckles bruised BY a lady in black. Pretty simple right?

As a side note, when you're using this in the passive form, you can usually exchange the word "got" for the word "was". "I was walking in the street, and I was hit by a car!" "I was punched in the face by my brother.". The use of "was" instead of "got" is a little bit less strong, a little bit more formal, and it feels a little bit more factual. You're not adding any commentary to what's occurring.

Let's get back to our song. His usage of "got" is a bit more complicated than the examples I have been giving because of how he's explaining it to us. "I got my knuckles bruised". To make this more like our examples, we can reword it. If you'd like to try it yourself, pause the podcast right here and see if you can figure out how to make the phrase "I got my knuckles bruised" sound the same as the phrase "I got punched in the face". Alright, how did it go? Think you've got it? We can reword his version of the phrase to say "I got bruised on my knuckles". We add in a prepositional phrase to specify where the bruising took place. But it means the same thing.

Really quickly, let's talk about what it means to "bruise" something? A bruise is a dark colored space on your skin, usually blue or purple colored, that appears after you are injured. When used as a verb, it means to "make a bruise". So if you want to give somebody a bruise, you bruise them. Bruising something means that whatever you did made a bruise appear.

So who was bruising our singer's knuckles? Do you remember how we introduce the person who performed the action? It's right after the word "by". I got punched in the face BY my brother. I got hit BY a car. He got his knuckles bruised BY a lady in black.

A lady in black. Sounds scary. Do you know what he's talking about here? Our hint is of that this is a Catholic school. For those of you who are less familiar with Catholicism, he's talking about a nun. A nun is a woman who has dedicated her life to service within the church. In reality, nuns are all different. Some are nice, and some are mean. But there is a stereotype, especially when we talk about Catholic schools, that the nuns are harsh and mean. We might even say vicious.

The reason why she's called a "lady in black", is because nuns wear something called a habit. You can think of a habit as sort of a uniform for nuns. Most habits are black.

In this case, our singer is explaining a memory of a nun who was harsh or mean to him. When he talks about his knuckles getting bruised, we are supposed to imagine a young boy who has done something wrong. Perhaps he has disobeyed a rule, or maybe he didn't finish his homework. For his punishment, the nun takes a ruler (which is a stick used for measuring lengths), and hits his knuckles. This is where the bruises on his knuckles come from.

This is normally considered a cruel and very old-fashioned punishment. It's not surprising that the singer thinks that the school was vicious!

So let's re-write what he's singing. "When I was in a very cruel Catholic school, a nun hit me on my knuckles". That's a pretty sad memory.

Let's take a look at the end of the verse.

"I held my tongue as she told me, "Son, fear is the heart of the love", so I never went back.

This ending is a little bit tricky to hear correctly in the song. The line breaks while he's quoting the nun, so it may not immediately clear after the first listen what he's saying.

We have four different parts here.

The first one, "I held my tongue"
The second one, "As she told me"
The third, "Son, fear is the heart of love"
And the fourth, "So I never went back"

We'll start with the first one.

"I held my tongue" is a funny English idiom. If we take it literally, it means that you grab your tongue with your hand and hold it. Go ahead, try it. Now that you've tried it, what do you think the idiom means? The singer doesn't mean that he literally held onto his tongue...he means that he stopped himself from speaking. Usually this phrase means that you *want* to say something, but that you stop yourself from saying it. You "hold" your tongue. In this case he is going to disagree with what the nun says to him, but he doesn't say anything out loud, even though he wants to. Probably because he is afraid to get hit again!

He is holding his tongue while she is telling him something. "I held my tongue as she told me".

The next word "Son" begins her quote. What she was directly saying to him. Her full quote is "Son, fear is the heart of love".

Why does she call him "son" here? She isn't his mother!

Calling someone "son" is an old-fashioned way to refer to someone younger than you. Someone older, or in a higher position than you can call you "son" if they want to remind you that they are supposed to be respected, in the same way you should respect your mother or your father. It's not as common today, but it was very normal historically.

In the Catholic church, it's a little bit different. Priests are sometimes called "father", and nuns are called "sister" or "mother". You're probably familiar with "Mother Theresa". Likewise, or similarly, priests and nuns might refer to the people they are in charge of as "son" or "daughter".

So she is referring to him as "son". This reinforces or reminds us, that she is in a position of authority above him. That is to say, she is in charge of him.

She says to him, "fear is the heart of love. What does this mean? She is saying that at the very center of love, it's heart, the thing that defines love, is fear. Love requires fear. She wants him to fear her, because she believes that fear is where love comes from. I imagine that most of you listening disagree with this very sad sentiment! Our singer does too! That is why he's "holding his tongue". He's definitely afraid of her, but it doesn't seem like he loves her very much.

In fact, our verse ends with the singer explaining his response to what she said. He says "so I never went back". The word "so" here introduces a consequence. The teacher said something, he disagreed and SO he never went back. He never returned to the school after that moment. Perhaps he also means that he abandoned his religion altogether. And maybe we get a clue here, as to why he feels like heaven and hell might be closed up, like we heard in the chorus. Maybe, in his mind, they are closed to him, because he doesn't believe they exist anymore.

A sad ending to this verse. Next time, we'll finish up the song by talking about the 3rd and final verse. I hope that you will be back and that you'll join us next time. Have a great week.