The Ballad of Maid Mara

The faeries had danced so fervently that night,

I had almost wept to see them stop,

Blackened birch encircled the ritual

As a fire raged wild on the hilltop.

To hide in the trees was a reckless gamble

For their sharp eyes detected me within,

Their wings are as green as the glare of the moor;

Eyes and forest akin.

I am in no hurry, yet they seize me all the same

And drop the green knots they have tied.

The birch logs below cry out beneath the flames,

With wails that urge me to hide.

This tongue of the fae holds a shrill sense of beauty

Behind serrated teeth that hissed,

My betrothed had spoken a language so foreign

And on my hand laid rest a stolen kiss.

These feral creatures had meant me no harm

For I was welcomed as one of their own,

The unkempt grass we waded through

Until I came upon a knot they had thrown.

Their whispers were that of compassion and care

When they giggled as I reached for the knot's glow.

Tugging at my green shawl, they motioned for my name:

Mara, I told them so.

They screamed and chanted: Chun na mara! Chun na mara!

Yet their words washed over my head,

From her mountain throne, Nevis, cried the goddess, Beira,

As I touched the green knot instead.

O' what wisdom, what sight I beheld

When my finger clutched that string!

Its euphonic rhapsody flooded through burnt trees

As seven faeries began to sing.

Their song was of beauty, their dance was of grace

Every flower in Alba had bloomed,

The pale lips had kissed my neck, my face, until

Red smiles glistened under the moon.

They tied the green knot around my finger

And sent me on my way,

Through the forest I wove, for I could not linger,

My betrothed was approaching, said the fae.

I had no knowledge of how I came to learn their language

Nor how they knew of my intended,

But these faeries were of such immeasurable wisdom 

That they brought comfort as I descended

Into the forest, far from the civilisation

That had seen me shackled all these years,

In betrothals and motherly birthing bed terrors

That had so long reduced me to tears.

They would come for me soon; I hear them behind

The birchwood on which wisps are shadowed,

Perhaps they thought me dead, and followed the river

Which flowed past my feet below.

His voice traversed the forest in a haunting clamour

That assured me he would search without fear,

For he was my superior in his boundless intrepidity,

Though before this creature, he would not near:

She was an ugly thing, a hunched over hag

With breasts flung behind her back,

In her hands lay a soaked white frock to fold

Which she placed at the foot of the track.

Wha goes there? cried she, hoarse as a crow

With one decayed tooth black as night,

It crumbled in her mouth as I whimpered a whisper,

Mara, trembling at the sight.

Her scaled skin rose, her webbed feet walked

Across the glen's grass so green,

With tangled ebon hair that saw the moon's light blocked

Stood the foulest creature I had ever seen!

She clawed at her swollen and bloodied stomach

Then pressed a cold hand to my chest,

Undoing my laces, she pulled the dress from my hips

To cleanse in the water with the rest.

It was the knot that frightened her, the string's green glow

Caused a tear to escape her eye,

Grasping it from me, she dropped it below

And cried her melancholy sigh.

When she had me naked, with my clothes in her arms

She led me to her spot by the stream,

Chanting her dirge, so spectral was her charm that

My clothes she began to clean.

This is no fae, no woman of grace

(Though she sings of a mother's love).

Her scrubbing is that of anguish and duty

As she bathed my ring-fingered glove.

Her cleaning commenced and whence it concluded

She rose to whisper in my ear,

Murmuring of man, of lochs and the sun,

My path was made perfectly clear.

She wailed as I left, and stroked her hands

To her stomach though a babe would appear,

As though she had seen such sorrows before

She turned and effaced her cold tears.

Galaxies I beheld; the spiral of stars

And a woman's wail atop the water,

As my trail unfolded, echoing through the glen's corners

Cried the caution of Cassiopeia's daughter.

O' what beauty, what a marvellous sight

I came upon to behold,

All had changed as the water trail split

And the shadowed glens did unfold.

He stood by a loch; pale-eyed, and sandy-haired

Was his mane – as cruel as summer,

Yer clan, guid sir? I called through the air,

His response was in the neigh of a mummer.

What a curious being, he entices me so as he approaches

Though an untamed mare,

With a touch alike the dew grass below,

He traced where my betrothed had not dared.

These bumps on my skin - it must be the wind

Else what made my hair stand in such a way?

My questions he ignored, granting only a grin;

The fairest of men, my eyes did lay.

Seven times he circled until I grew faint

At his blurred ethereal stance,

Of hunger and lust he was the patron saint

For he swept me clean into a trance.

Scáthach's lament from her Isle of Skye

Was silenced as our two hearts did meet,

Though hastily we rode and faded her cry

For I had no wish to retreat.

This man with sand hair appears to trot

And by his back hangs a tail,

His summer mane is clad in braids of green knots –

The faeries have seen to this Gael.

We passed through the fields, where the glens had resided

Yet now there lay only scree,

The spray of salt marshes smothered the sides of

His legs until whence we came upon the sea.

Seven miles we traversed, through the unseeing land

Where man and nature were at peace,

As the shore of the loch emerged at his hoof

He brought me undersea for a feast.

It was peaceful below, black as night

With nothing in sight to distract,

His eyes were twin moons that shone a ghoulish white,

Quickly he began to act—

My skin he did tear, kissing and caressing

Though he knew what I had craved for so long,

He ravished and tore until I heard myself confessing

I had desired such an escape all along.

He granted my wish, and complied most dutifully

By snapping the neck bone from my head,

Attacking my chest, a meal of me he ate

Until the water was layered in red.

When all that remained was marrow and liver

He belched and left me for dead,

The organ arose to float atop the river

As my bones sank down to the seabed.

Then off he trotted to claim his next victim

With a beautifully mastered glance,

That the faeries watch from within their flames

As they continued their fervent dance.