My first conception of the mythical black knight was not from reading stories of King Arthur (varies, but generally a murderous sort) or Robin Hood (King Richard in disguise), not even from watching Monty Python (relentless!), but from listening to Deep Purple’s “Black Night” and conceiving of it as a Black Knight, particularly in the chorus “Maybe I'll find on the way down the line / That I'm free, free to be me / Black [k]night is a long way from home,” with its combination of hope (the possibility of freedom, as yet unrealized) and forlornness (driven home in the perfectly sung line “Black night is a long way from home” but also born in the tone of the lyrics throughout).
