Taylor Swift is rather famous for pulling from her real life for her lyrics. The latest example: A song about the Harkness family who once lived in the Watch Hill mansion that Swift owns.

Swift frames the tale as “a misfit widow getting gleeful revenge on the town that cast her out.”

The number is titled “The Last Great American Dynasty,” and it is part of Swift’s “surprise” album, “Folklore,” that dropped at midnight Thursday.

Swift co-wrote and recorded the album during quarantine and says in the liner notes, “I found myself not only writing my own stories, but also writing about or from the perspective of people I’ve never met, people I’ve known, or those I wish I hadn’t.”

But “The Last Great American Dynasty” indicates that Swift feels a kinship with the former mistress of the place, Rebekah Harkness.

As area residents and Swift devotees well know, Swift bought an oceanfront mansion dubbed Holiday House in Watch Hill in 2013.

The home once belonged to the Harkness family (who became wealthy thanks to having an original stake in Standard Oil). William Hale Harkness’ wife, Rebekah, was a colorful figure who loved the arts — so much so that, after being a benefactor for the renowned Joffrey Ballet, she created a dance company of her own and dubbed it the Harkness Ballet. She brought the dancers out to Watch Hill during the summers; neighbors weren’t pleased when she built a huge dome on the lawn as a place where the dancers could practice, The New York Times reported.

The Day’s David Collins wrote columns about Harkness and her family in 2013 and 2015. Collins first wrote about Rebekah and then interviewed Allen Pierce, Rebekah’s son.

The columns detailed various tales from Harkness’ spectacular life. Even at the end, she did things with a flourish: When she died in 1982 at age 67, Harkness’ ashes went into a jeweled chalice that she had purchased from a friend of hers — Salvador Dali.

However Swift heard about Harkness’ life, it clearly struck a chord. For “The Last Great American Dynasty,” a mid-tempo pop-folk concoction, Swift writes about Harkness and eventually parallels her own life with Harkness’.

The chorus includes the lyrics: “Who knows, if she never showed up, what could’ve been/There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen/She had a marvelous time ruining everything.”

The song goes on:

“Fifty years is a long time/Holiday House sat quietly on that beach./Free of women with madness, their men and bad habits/And then it was bought by me.”

And then Swift notes that she bought the house and subs in references to herself in the final chorus: “Who knows, if I never showed up, what could've been … I had a marvelous time ruining everything.”

Is Swift referring to how local folks complained about the work on the sea wall at her Watch Hill place? Or something else entirely? No word on that.

k.dorsey@theday.com