Lyrics to
Minstrel Boy

This version of Minstrel Boy was released by Bob Dylan in 1970.

Our About Bob Dylan page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for Minstrel Boy from 1970 as well as all of the other lyrics from Bob Dylan that we have in our lyrics database.

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Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin ?
Who’s gonna let it roll ?
Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin ?
Who’s gonna let it down easy to save his soul ?

Oh look, he’s driving a long, long time
There he still sits on top of the hill
Well aching and jumping with all laid down
With all of them ladies you know he’s lonely still
Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin ?
Who’s gonna let it roll ?
Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin ?
Who’s gonna let it down easy to save his soul ?

Well knee deep in number, heavy in toil
Mighty mockingbird he still has such a heavy load
Beneath his boundaries but more if I can tell
With all of these travelling but I’m still on that road
Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin ?
Who’s gonna let it roll ?
Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin ?
Who’s gonna let it down easy to save his soul ?

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Bob Dylan has released many songs over the years besides Minstrel Boy. Bob Dylan released songs from 1962 to 2006 spanning across albums like Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Another Side Of Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin', Highway 61 Revisited, Bringing All Back Home, Blonde On Blonde, John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, Selfportrait, New Morning, Dylan, Planet Waves, The Basement Tapes, Blood On The Tracks, Desire, Street Legal, Slow Train Coming, Saved, Shot Of Love, Infidels, Empire Burlesque, Knocked Out Loaded, Down In The Groove, Oh Mercy, Under The Red Sky, Good As I Been To You, World Gone Wrong, Time Out Of Mind, Love And Theft, and Modern Times. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Bob Dylan.

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About Lyrics and Minstrel Boy by Bob Dylan

When you decide to study the lyrics to Minstrel Boy, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1970 song by Bob Dylan. Some of the lyrics to Minstrel Boy have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Bob Dylan and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

You can understand the lyrics to Minstrel Boy if you take apart the structure of the words. The word "lyric" itself derives from the Latin word lyricus, with the actual English word lyrics applied to the definition "words set to music" listed in Stainer and Barrett's 1876 Dictionary of Musical Terms. Continuing the chain, the Latin word lyricus derives from the Greek word λυρικός or lyrikós. This somewhat means "poetry accompanied by the lyre" or "words set to music." You can easily see that by looking at the background of the word lyric, that the "lyrics to Minstrel Boy" means the words set to the music of Minstrel Boy, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Bob Dylan. The singular form "lyric" is still used to mean the complete words to a song. However, the singular form lyric is also commonly used to refer to a specific line (or phrase) within a song's lyrics. Hence, by this analysis of word structure, you could say that the lyric to Minstrel Boy and the lyrics to Minstrel Boy are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Bob Dylan who came here looking just for the lyrics to Minstrel Boy, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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