"Dream Harp" by Marja Lee Kruijt © 1999

     There once was a king in the east country who courted a lady in the west. They wed, and they were happy together until one day the queen went out walking and fell asleep beneath a tree. When she woke, she was wild-eyed and full of grief. The King of Faery had come to her, riding on his milk-white steed, and had told her to bid goodbye to her lands. The next day he'd come back to claim her, whether she wanted him or no.

     The next day the queen stood waiting with one thousand of her husband's finest knights standing guard. But she was spirited away right from their midst, and no one could say where she had gone. After this, the king went mad with loneliness and sorrow. He put his lands in the care of his steward and went into the woods alone, barefoot, with nothing but his clothes and his harp upon his back. He lived on roots and berries, as wild as any beast of the wood. Music was his only solace, and even the birds and animals would stop to listen to him play.

     One day he saw some ladies who were hawking in the woodlands -- and among was his own dear wife. When the ladies went away again, he hid himself and followed them; and at last they came to a great castle, fairer than any he'd ever seen. He knocked at the gate, and told the porter that he was a minstrel come to play for the lord. He went into the great hall, and came before the throne.

     "What man art thou?" asked the Faery King. "I never sent for thee, and never found I a man so bold as to come here unbidden."

     "Lord," said King Orfeo, "I am but a poor musician, and I have come here for to play." Saying this, he took up his harp and began to perform for the company. All the court came to listen, lying down at his feet.

     First he played bright songs of joy. Then he played songs of sorrow and pain. Last he played "The Faery Reel," and the faeries were so pleased with him that the Faery King said, "Minstrel, ask of me whatever it will be, and I will pay thee largely."

     "Then let me take my Lady Isabel away," said King Orfeo, revealing he was no minstrel at all.

     "Nay," said the Faery King, "choose something else, for thou art lean and rough and black, and she is lovely and has no lack." But he'd given his word. The Faery King had to let the Lady Isabel free, or else he would have been foresworn and shamed before humankind.

     And so where the swords of a thousand knights had failed, the music of one man triumphed. For it is said the faeries love music more than food, wine, or life itself. . . .

     The story of King Orfeo, so reminiscent of the medieval romance Orpheus, is not a romance itself, or a fairy tale, or the plot of a fantasy novel. It is a song -- sung by minstrels over seven hundred years ago, and still performed by musicians today. In folk clubs, concert halls, and the back rooms of pubs across the British Isles, fiddlers are still playing "the songs of joy and the songs of pain"; harpers still play "The Faery Reel." And these magical songs have emigrated across the Atlantic to inspire a modern generation of musicians -- and of writers and artists as well.

     In North America, the English-language folk music tradition comes primarily from British, Scottish, and Irish roots. This music had a strong revival in popular interest in the 1970s; many of us owe our love of Celtic music to the influential folk bands of the period: Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Pentangle, and harpists Robin Williamson and Alan Stivell. These musicians adapted ancient tunes to modern, electric instruments, introducing folk music on both sides of the Atlantic to a generation who'd grown up on rock-and-roll.

     At the same time, bands and performers like De Danann, Planxty, June Tabor, and Martin Carthy were creating an audience for traditional music played in more traditional ways. In Brittany, the north of Scotland, the west of Ireland and other Celtic strongholds, this was all part of a larger cultural movement to reclaim the history, languages, myths and folk roots of Great Britain's Celtic past. It was during this time -- when mythological scholarship began to flourish, when Arthurian studies became popular reading, when young musicians picked up the Celtic harp and ballads like "King Orfeo" were sung once more, accompanied by electric guitar -- that fantasy literature emerged as a popular genre. In the 1970s, the works of J.R.R. Tolkien became bestsellers and Lin Carter's "Sign of the Unicorn" series brought classic fantasy literature back into print. Ever since that time there has been a link between fantasy literature and folk music. The audiences for both often overlap, and it is not difficult to understand why. Old folk ballads and new fantasy tales are both drawn from the same deep well of folk history, folk ways, myths, and stories that are the heritage of all English-speaking peoples.

     The modern interest in Celtic ballads is made possible by the scholarly work begun with an earlier revival of folk music, back in the 18th century. Until that time, traditional ballads were passed orally through the generations -- added to, embellished, or forgotten altogether according to the tastes of the singers and of the times. In the 18th and early 19th century, men like Bishop Percy and Sir Walter Scott began to collect this material from the old people and the traveling people (the gypsies), insisting to incredulous academics that this was a respectable form of scholarship. They published their work and thereby preserved innumerable ballad lyrics that would surely have been lost. At one point Percy stumbled upon a treasure trove of lyrics written down by an earlier collector that were being used as fire lighters; he rescued them with anquish at the thought of all the ballads already fed to the flames.

     In the late 19th century, Sir Francis Child published his great work, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, an enormous compendium of traditional lyrics that is still the standard reference volume -- and a treasure trove of magical tales. Ballads -- like myths, epics, and fairy tales -- are part of that great simmering Soup of Story (if I may borrow an image from Professor J.R.R. Tolkien) from which modern writers of fantasy have taken nourishment and inspiration. One need only dip at random into the thick pages of the the five Child volumes in order to discover why.

     There you will find the ballad of "Kemp Owyne," in which a young woman is turned into a loathsome dragon. Knight after knight comes to slay the beast; the dragon kills them all in turn, with tears of regret on her scaly cheeks. It is only when her own true love comes and wisely puts down his sword, kissing her thrice on her horrible face, that the spell is broken and the princess is turned back into a beautiful young maid.

     In "Twa Sisters," a knight courts the dark eldest sister, but his heart belongs to the fair youngest. The dark girl invites the fair one to come walk with her beside the strand. There she pushes her sister in, and despite the girl's pleas for mercy, she calmly watches as her sister drowns. Later, a minstrel walks upon the beach and the body of a young maid floats to land. He makes a harp of her breast bone, and strings it with her yellow hair. He is hired to play at the dark girl's wedding -- but when the harp begins to play, it tells the tale of her evil deed.

     In "The Elfin Knight," a maiden hears faery music and dreams of a supernatural lover. The elf knight appears at her request, but gives her one look and tells her she's too young. The song becomes a riddling song, similar to Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme -- a riddling match charged with sexual overtones. In the end, the elf knight announces he will return to his wife and seven children, while the disgusted young girl declares, "My maidenhead I'll then keep still; let the Elfin Knight do what he will."

     In "Reynardine," a mysterious man accosts and seduces a woman as she walks among the hills. The man is a shapechanger, a were-fox. We don't know what he will do to her in the castle where he steals her away, but our last image of Reynardine is of his sharp teeth gleaming brightly in the twilight.

     In "Clark Sanders," seven brothers stand over their sister's bed as she and her lover lie sleeping. They discuss what they should do to this knight who has stained the family honor. Six of them agree to leave the sleeping lovers alone. The seventh takes out his sword, and runs it through the sleeping man's heart. When the young woman wakes, she finds her love is a bloody corpse beside her. She goes mad with grief, the song ends . . . and then the story is taken up again in another ballad, called "Sweet William's Ghost." The spirit of the murdered man returns to the girl's window. She begs him to kiss her, but he will not: "My mouth it is full cold, Marget; It has the smell now of the ground; And if I kiss thy comely mouth, Thy days will not be long."

     This idea that the dead may not touch the living is echoed in "The Unquiet Grave." A maiden sits in a cemetery for twelve months, mourning her lover. Finally the spirit appears and asks in a rather cranky way, "Who sits here crying and will not let me sleep?" The maiden begs it for one kiss, but she is refused by the revenant: "O lily, lily are my lips; My breath comes earthy strong; If you have one kiss of my clay-cold mouth, Your time will not be long."

     Not all ballads in the Celtic folk tradition concern magic, faery, or the supernatural. Other common themes are love (usually tragic), death (usually gruesome), and family troubles that make the soap operas of our own age pale by comparison: "What is that blood on your sword, my son, what is that blood my dear-o? It's the blood of my sister, Mother, who I have killed in the greenwood-o. . . ." (In this song, the brother is trying to avoid discovery of the fact that he's made his sister pregnant.)

     As I began to gather material for this article, I spoke with a number of writers and artists in both England and in the U.S. about their interest in Celtic balladry. At a dinner table discussion that included folklorists Brian and Wendy Froud, folk singer June Tabor, and folk musician Mark Emerson (formerly of Pye Wackett, now performing with June), we made a list of ballads with fantasy elements -- and discovered that geography plays a part in determining the amount of magic to be found in the old songs. Ireland, that land of silver-tongued poets and the silver-haired sidhe (the Irish faery folk), has relatively few supernatural ballads compared to England and Scotland; while in North America, the supernatural elements in the songs are often stripped out altogether -- as in the songs where faery fiddlers are replaced with a fiddle-playing Devil.

     The best place to find magical balladry is in the Border Country between England and Scotland. From that lovely, much-disputed land, with its complex and brutal history, come some of the best known and most evocative songs: "Tam Lin," "Thomas the Rhymer," "Sweet William's Ghost," "The Broomfield Hill," "Willie's Lady," "The Elfin Knight," "Twa Sisters," "Kemp Owyne," and "The Daemon Lover."

     Some years ago I traveled the Border Country along with fantasy author Jane Yolen, who has used ballad themes to great effect in several of her books. ("Tam Lin" in the picture book of the same name, "Kemp Owyn" in the picture book Dove Isabeau; "The Grey Selchie" in the collection Neptune Rising. In Sister Light, Sister Dark, Yolen creates her own ballads, which read nonetheless like songs handed down through many, many years.) We were searching for Carterhaugh, the enchanted wood of the ballad "Tam Lin," and after many false turns on winding Scottish roads we found it, above the river Yarrow (a name evocative of another well-known ballad). It was a journey I had wanted to make ever since I was a teenager listening to Fairport Convention's rendition of the song; and despite a modern housing estate tucked among those Selkirk hills, I still felt unexpectedly moved by the sight of that haunted green land. "Tam Lin" has captured the imagination of more fantasy authors and artists than any other single ballad, perhaps because of its sensual theme and unusual hero: an independent, courageous, stubborn young woman, pregnant with her woodland lover's child, determined to save him from the Faery Queen and the unearthly Faery Court. Most people know the ballad from the Fairport recording, but Pye Wackett has also recorded it in a lovely version considerably less electric; Frankie Armstrong has recorded a whole cycle of songs around the Tam Lin legend; and a rather dreadful English movie was made, redeemed only by its Pentangle soundtrack.

     Patricia A. McKillip's novel Winter Rose is a gorgeous, poetic work of mythic fiction weaving "Tam Lin" and a second faery ballad, "Thomas the Rhymer," into a wintry romance set in a land reminiscent of medieval England. Pamela Dean's fine novel Tam Lin (Book #5 in the "Adult Fairy Tales" series) uses the ballad as the basis of a contemporary coming-of-age tale set among the theater students at a midwestern college campus. Elizabeth Marie Pope's retelling of the ballad, titled The Perilous Gard, is set in the courts of Elizabethan Scotland. The book is written for Young Adult readers, but is highly recommended for adults as well. Alan Garner's Red Shift is an unusual, subtle, powerful reworking of the ballad's themes. Dahlov Ipcar uses the ballad in her short novel A Dark Horn Blowing, while Joan Vinge retells it in short story form in "Tam Lin" (published in Imaginary Lands, edited by Robin McKinley). Diana Wynne Jones, like Patricia McKillip, combines the tale with "Thomas the Rhymer" in her novel Fire and Hemlock -- but this wonderful, highly original tale is set in modern England. Scottish poet Liz Lochhead's long, wry poem "Tam Lin's Lady" is well worth seeking out. (It appears in her collections The Grimm Sisters and Dreaming Frankenstein.) "So you met him in a magic place?" writes Lochhead. "O.K. But that's a bit airy fairy for me. . . . And if, as the story goes nine times out of ten -- he took you by the milk-white hand & by the grassgreen sleeve & laid you by that bonny bank & asked of you no leave, well, so what? You're not the first to fall for it, good green girdle and all -- with your school tie rolled up in your pocket, trying to look eighteen. I know. All perfectly forgiveable. Relax. What I do think was a little dumb, if you don't mind my saying so, was to swallow that old one about you being the only one who could save him. . . . " (For further information on the ballad and its variants, visit the Tam Lin Pages .

     Jane Yolen continued her exploration of the Scottish borders along with Ellen Kushner when Ellen was writing her version of the ballad Thomas the Rhymer. Together they found the ancient Rhymer's Tower behind a place called (what else?) The Rhymer's Cafe. The rolling land of the Eildon Hills (where Thomas encounters the Queen of Faery, becomes her lover, and must serve her for seven years) has found its counterpart in the rolling, mythic landscape of Ellen's World Fantasy Award-winning novel. I recently spoke with Ellen about how she came to write Thomas the Rhymer. At that time, a series of novels based on ballads was in the works, a series which never came to fruition. "I had to do Thomas. I didn't want anyone else to do it," she recalls, "because, like every other writer, I knew Thomas was my story. He holds the mythic power of King Arthur in the hearts of poets: the artist who is literally seduced by his muse, comes closer to her than any human should to the source of his art, and is profoundly changed. He can never be at home in this world again, and yet he must continue to live in it. That's how every writer feels, I think.

     "Many writer friends had talked about writing a Thomas story someday; kind of like an actor playing King Lear: it's a Great Subject that probably should not be tackled in one's youth. I would never have had the nerve to do it if it hadn't been forced upon me by circumstance. I still feel a little humble about it. I don't think I've written the definitive Thomas; I've just written my Thomas, the Thomas who addressed issues that were upon me in those years. Twenty years from now, I might like to do him again."

     Ellen is a folk singer as well as a writer (she has performed a musical version of her novel with June Tabor in London); she knows the old material well and the book is rich with ballad themes. "The Trees Grow High" inspired the last third of the novel; the middle section, set in Faery, makes use of the ballad "The Famous Flower of Serving Men." "Famous Flower" is the story of a woman whose husband has been slain by thieves hired by her own mother. She dons men's clothes and joins the king's court, while the murdered man returns to earth as a dove, shedding blood-red tears through the forest.

     Delia Sherman's excellent first novel, Through a Brazen Mirror, is also based on this evocative song. "I heard Martin Carthy's version of 'Famous Flower'," Delia told me, "and it haunted me with questions. If a mother so hated her child, why not just kill her and be done? Perhaps there was more to it than simple hatred. The other train of thought the ballad started had to do with cross-dressing in a medieval culture. And the third could be stated as: In all these ballads with girls dressed as boys, the man falls in love with the boy, not the girl. What would happen if he weren't relieved to discover his beloved's true sex? In short, Famous Flower gave me a beautiful, mysterious narrative framework upon which to hang all my favorite concerns: gender confusion, different kinds of love, the singlemindedness of the mad, foundlings and their origins."

     I asked Delia if she had a theory about why certain writers found ballad material so compelling, returning to it again and again. "What I like best about ballads," she said, "is that they're plots with all the motivations left out. Why did Young Randall's stepmother want to poison him? Why choose eels? Why did Randall eat them (especially if they were green and yellow)? There's a novel there, or at least a short story. Ballads give you classical human situations, and also some decidedly unclassical ones, exploring relationships between lovers, parents and children, between friends, masters and servants. Many of them deal with power and powerlessness, which is one of the central themes of fairy tales too, but it seems to me that ballads are more pragmatic, more realistic, in their denouments. Not every villain gets his/her just desserts. I can imagine a ballad variant of 'Beauty and the Beast' in which Beauty comes too late, and sings a plaintive last verse over the Beast's body, about how she will sew him a shroud of the linen fine and sit barefoot in the dark all her days, for the love of him who she loved too late."

     Greer Ilene Gilman's Moonwise, more a prose poem than a novel, is steeped in Celtic balladry from every corner of the British Isles; Gilman has an extensive knowledge of the folk tradition, and uses it to unusual effect. Another excellent use of balladry in fiction, if one will permit a modern ballad beside the traditional songs, can be found in Pamela Dean's "Owlswater," a lovely, long story found in Xanadu II (edited by Jane Yolen) based on the song "The Witch of Westmorlands" penned by Scottish singer Archie Fisher. Irish, English and Scottish balladry was transplanted to America along with immigrants from those countries. It took root in the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern seaboard, and a strong ballad tradition can be found in North Carolina, Tennessee and other Appalachian states. Sharyn McCrumb has written several engrossing mystery novels using folklore themes. Her best-selling "Ballad Series" begins with the The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. Charles de Lint is a Celtic folk musician (with the Canandian band Jump at the Sun) as well as a writer of mythic fiction, and thus his books are permeated with ballads, tunes, and folk musician protagonists -- particularly his charming and magical Cornish novel The Little Country. Emma Bull is also both a writer and musician (formerly with Cats Laughing and The Flash Girls). Classic folk tunes and a seductive faery fiddler can be found in her lauded first novel War for the Oaks. De Lint, Bull, Kushner and several other writers have all drawn upon ballad material for the stories in the seven books of the Borderland series -- although the old tunes have an urban edge here, and a rock-and-roll beat. You'll also find old ballads among the stories collected in The Horns of Elfland, a splendid anthology of tales about music and magic edited by Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, and Don Keller. Elements of the ballads "Thomas the Rhymer" and "King Orfeo" can be found in the "Voyage to the Basset" series book I wrote in collaboration with Ellen Steiber, The Raven Queen.

     If you are searching for ballad-related material, be sure to look for the Ballad series created by Charles Vess and published by his Green Man Press. Charles (a gifted artist whose work is reminiscent of Arthur Rackham) asked several of his favorite writers to pen scripts based on classic folk ballads for a series of comic book retellings. The series includes Charles de Lint's "Sovay" and "Twa Corbies," Jane Yolen's "King Henry," Delia Sherman's "Daemon Lover," Midori Snyder's "Barbara Allen," Sharyn McCrumb's "Thomas the Rhymer," Neil Gaiman's "False Knight on the Road," and more. Charles says he was inspired to create this series "because I've listened to the songs for over twenty years now. They are great stories, filled with exactly what I want to draw. I love their language; the challenge for me is to find ways of learning to draw that gorgeous language."

     While looking at modern renditions of old ballads, we must not ignore the music itself. There is a staggering wealth of tapes, CDs and concerts to chose from these days, even if one is not lucky enough to have a good folk club or a lively pub down the road. Recordings by John Renbourne, Pentangle, early Steeleye Span, Frankie Armstrong, Nic Jones, Archie Fisher, Martin Carthy, June Tabor, Maddy Prior, Silly Sisters, Loreena McKennit, Connie Dover, Capercaille, Arcady, Boiled in Lead, Kate Rusby, Eliza Carthy, Sheila Chandra (England/India), Kornog (Brittany), and Garmana (Scandinavia) are particularly recommended. For more information on traditional folk music, visit Green Man Review and Rambles, two excellent on-line review journals. The Ceolas Celtic music site is also a good source of information, as are Dirty Linen, and Living Tradition magazines.

     Like all folk material, the written word and visual arts can only complement, not replace, the oral experience. To hear these old songs in a live performance by these gifted, modern musicians gives us a taste of what it must have been like Once Upon a Time, when the traveling minstrels came to play. They would take out their fiddle, their harp, or their drum, or else simply raise their voice in song -- a song of joy, then a song of pain. And then, at last, the Faery Reel.

About the Author: Terri Windling is a writer, artist, and editor, and the founder of the Endicott Studio. For more information, please visit her Endicott bio page. Copyright © 1996 by Terri Windling. This article appeared in Realms of Fantasy magazine, 1996, and may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written