The Wind Among The Reeds

This week we continue the embarrassment that is our series of episodes about W B Yeats.

To summarize from last episode W B Yeats was part of a literary movement which led to the style of fairies that we mostly saw in Ars Magica: Second Edition. The problem with that for us was that it tended to push “the Irish were right” view out across all of Mythic Europe. We were seeing Irish style fairies everywhere rather than extracts from the local folklore. the other problem with Yeats is that he cheats a lot: many of his Irish fairies aren’t Irish at all. For example the one that we had last week comes from a Greek folk-song. He was also terribly antisemitic but that material doesn’t show up here.

Rather then continue to torture myself by inviting the old enemy into my home again and again, I’m going to string all of these episodes together into one slightly longer episode. You will notice his most famous fairy poem, which is The Stolen Child isn’t among these stories, because these all come from The Wind Among the Reeds which is it one of his earlier works. If you enjoy these poems The Stolen Child, particularly the Lorenna McKennit version, is well worth listening to.

Thanks again to all the LibriVox recorders.

The Hosting of the Sidhe

The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;
Caolte tossing his burning hair
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing ‘twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.

The initially obvious plot hooks are he two characters who are described. Beyond that it’s useful in that it gives us material about how the Faerie Host looks. Generally the Host that we’ve used in Ars Magica has been either a sort of wild thing like Hearne’s Hunt or a chivalric thing with knights in silver armor prancing about the place. A point to notice here is that the Sidhe refers to fairies can also refer, according to Yates, to the wind. They always have streaming locks. They always have dishevelled clothes. When people see whirlwinds in the street they believe that’s a sidhe passing by, so they don’t look at them. There is strangely a similar custom among some Australian Aborigines but they believe that the creature that is inside the whirlwind is a sort of human cassowary hybrid….sorry I’m wandering.

This gives us a different way of portraying the Sidhe as an elemental force – hence the term that turns up in urban fiction all the time: the Queen of Air and Darkness.

The Cap and Bells

The jester walked in the garden:
The garden had fallen still;
He bade his soul rise upward
And stand on her window-sill.
It rose in a straight blue garment,
When owls began to call:
It had grown wise-tongued by thinking
Of a quiet and light footfall;
But the young queen would not listen;
She rose in her pale night gown;
She drew in the heavy casement
And pushed the latches down.
He bade his heart go to her,
When the owls called out no more;
In a red and quivering garment
It sang to her through the door.
It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming,
Of a flutter of flower-like hair;
But she took up her fan from the table
And waved it off on the air.
‘I have cap and bells,’ he pondered,
‘I will send them to her and die;’
And when the morning whitened
He left them where she went by.
She laid them upon her bosom,
Under a cloud of her hair,
And her red lips sang them a love song:
Till stars grew out of the air.
She opened her door and her window,
And the heart and the soul came through,
To her right hand came the red one,
To her left hand came the blue.
They set up a noise like crickets,
A chattering wise and sweet,
And her hair was a folded flower
And the quiet of love in her feet.

I’d like to flag this as an example both of ekstasis, the ability to spiritually wander, and as a source for the Ghostly Warder Virtue. After the jester dies he becomes the Ghostly Warder of the Queen (possibly because he has True Love which allows him to transcend death),

Ghostly Jester

Magic Might: 10 (Mentem)
Characteristics: Int +1, Per +1, Pre +1, Com +3, Str 0, Sta +1, Dex 0, Qik 0
Size: 0 (but non-physical)
Age: n/a
Decrepitude: Already dead
Confidence Score: 1 (3)
Virtues and Flaws: None (may take Virtues and Flaws as a grog, if desired by the troupe.) Arguably has True Love.
Personality Traits: Protective +3, Dramatic +2, Joyous +2,
Reputations: None
Combat: n/a The ghost is non-physical, and so cannot be harmed by combat or harm others
in combat.
Abilities: [Area] Lore 5 (court), Awareness 5 (where his beloved is), Carouse 1 [being the butt of jokes], Church Lore 1 (funerals), Folk Ken 4 (stories), Living Language 5 (courtly), Magic Lore 2 (ghosts), Profession (jester) 5 (storytelling)
Powers:
Kinesis, 5 points, Init 0, Terram: The ghost can move an object as if he were still physically present. One expenditure of Might allows him to move one object until he puts it down again. He has no combat Abilities, so she cannot fight wielding an object as a weapon. One exception is that the jester can move a group of traditional props of his trade, like juggling balls, at the same cost as a single object.
Equipment: Apparently clothing and tools, but these are all ghostly and really part of him.
Vis: None. Magi cannot render other characters’ Ghostly Warders down for vis.
Appearance: A jester who watches over the woman he fell in love with. Note that he is invisible to characters without an appropriate Virtue.
Base Creature: Ghostly Warder (RoP:M)

Aedh Pleads With the Elemental Powers

The Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows
Have pulled the Immortal Rose;
And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept,
The Polar Dragon slept,
His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep:
When will he wake from sleep?
Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,
With your harmonious choir[58]
Encircle her I love and sing her into peace,
That my old care may cease;
Unfold your flaming wings and cover out of sight
The nets of day and night.
Dim Powers of drowsy thought, let her no longer be
Like the pale cup of the sea,
When winds have gathered and sun and moon burned dim
Above its cloudy rim;
But let a gentle silence wrought with music flow
Whither her footsteps go.

In Ars Magica the elemental powers – strictly speaking – are a type of demon. We might stretch it, because he mentions a couple of constellations, to say that instead these are magical spirits. This enchanter is asking the magical spirits to protect his beloved – to give her magic resistance and other Virtues, such that her life is more comfortable .

That Polar Dragon though – it really does need statistics.

Aedh Wishes His Lover Were Dead

Were you but lying cold and dead,
And lights were paling out of the West,
You would come hither, and bend your head,
And I would lay my head on your breast;
And you would murmur tender words,
Forgiving me, because you were dead:
Nor would you rise and hasten away,
Though you have the will of the wild birds,
But know your hair was bound and wound
About the stars and moon and sun:
O would beloved that you lay
Under the dock-leaves in the ground,
While lights were paling one by one.

I’d just play this straight: a lot of the spiritual necomancers we’ve seen from the Order’s history are deeply disturbed and antisocial individuals. One might hire the PCs to kill someone they love just to make them easier to communicate with, or someone they are fixated on, just to make them, more biddable. If the PCs shelter the victim, that’s the Enemy Flaw / Hook.

Mongan Thinks of His Past Greatness

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young
And weep because I know all things now:
I have been a hazel tree and they hung
The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough
Among my leaves in times out of mind:
I became a rush that horses tread:
I became a man, a hater of the wind,
Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head[62]
Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair
Of the woman that he loves, until he dies;
Although the rushes and the fowl of the air
Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.

One of the mystic initiations – in certain faerie traditions – are illusory lives spent either in Faerie or in a sacred place. The character lives as a different creature. In Lycaneon, for example, there are people who were transformed into wolves. In other places people are transformed into trees. Some people suggest that the Druids go through cyclical reincarnation so House Diedne could be showing up any time now (see Sub Rosa issue 13).