2

There is a song called “Iron Out The Maiden” by Shahmen, here are the lyrics.

I don’t understand this sentence:

One butterfly pull the iron out the maiden

Why “pull”, not pulls or pulled?

And what does it mean to pull the iron out the maiden?

Arseny
  • 121
  • 3
  • 1
    The lyrics look like an Iron Maiden and Iron Butterfly reference. – Dekkadeci Dec 29 '18 at 17:01
  • 1
    It's not a reference to Iron Maiden. I don't think that the lyric is intended to be literal. See this discussion on a German notice board where they try to literally dissect the lyric - https://www.gutefrage.net/frage/wie-wuerdet-ihr-folgenden-englischen-satz-interpretieren – LittleVoice Oct 05 '20 at 20:45

2 Answers2

0

Buried deep in The comments on YouTube video is the following can explanation

It means to remove the nails that drive into you and fly away boi pretty simple

Another comment nearby said:

i think is more symnolism rather than literal stuff; like a butterfly is something extrimly frail; the iron isn't something evil on itself, but it probably can be seen as something bad, iron is static, it's not alive, and it often hurts anything made of flash; and than the maiden can mean different things, ofc there is the thing with the iron maiden, which is an object on itself, and in this case the maiden could be inteded as a woman, to keep a refernce to the iron maiden but still having it be a thing on his own about women in genral; still in this case i see it more as something personal like his soul; so the meaning would be like tryng to get the iron out of his soul, or cleaning his soul even tho to keep it clean it's very hard cause the willpower is frail like the butterfly. but that's just me anyway. what's for sure it's that it started by playng with the word "iron maiden" and than probably kept going giving it another meaning; or at least not talking specifically about the iron maiden itself in a literal sense

Both of these comments received up ticks and support from fellow fans.

LittleVoice
  • 416
  • 2
  • 13
0

This is my interpretation:

there is something called "the butterfly effect" Basically if you travelled back in time and stepped on a butterfly 1000 years ago, it could have catastophic effects on the present time.

An Iron Maiden is a torture device where nails are pushed against you from every side. This basically means that there is no wiggle room when you are inside the Iron Maiden, it hurts from every direction, and if you try to move to another direction to stop the pain, you hit the nails on the other side, there is nowhere you can move without hurting, even standing still hurts.

It is the same with drug use, you keep using and you hurt, you stop and the things you tried supressing with the drugs come back, it doesn't seem like there is a right answer to stop the pain.

When you pull the iron (nails) out of the maiden, the constant pain is gone, you get wiggle room, you can live.

So what I think he is saying here is, that there are so many times in his life where he had the chance to change his life. (or make it worse) and all it really took was that one butterfly.

This goes in line with:

I ain't got no time to waste, I've been wasted

  • he has been high and he's tired of it

Praying for some light to break but the days end Twilight, I'm wide awake, getting faded

  • He says he wants to make change, but he is waiting for external factors (the light) so he ends up in twilight (being high and not sleeping)

One butterfly pull the iron out the maiden

  • he's telling himself all it will take to stop using is one little thing (to justify him using)

He is justifying his drug use by saying he will stop now/one little thing could change his life/he just needs a little break from the world.

chris
  • 1
  • 1