HAUNTED LIGHT: 2011

Thursday, 22 December 2011

Wednesday, 30 November 2011

The Erl King

Guten Nacht

I'll be dead before dawn

Kind, mein Sohn

I'll be dead before dawn

And though your eyes appear

Wry and withdrawn

I'll be dead before dawn

Father! Father! I fear for the night

When the Erl King comes to collect us

Father! Father! I fear for my soul

As you should

Father! Father! Make sense of the night

Let's turn back our horse

And flee from this unsightly terror

That is trembling through these woods..

My Son, you must be pacified

These scenes of dreams are only imagination

My son, you must be satisfied

I'll keep you safe from fancy apparitions

My dear young Son, with eyes so wild

Be still my son, you waggish child

I'll hold your head and keep you warm

There's nothing here to harm you.

Child you're beautiful

Come lie with the Erl King

Child you're beautiful

Come quiet, come willing

The gifts I could give to you

The wind and the wild river spring

Child you're beautiful

Come quiet, come willing

Father! Father! Can you hear his cries?

The Erl King comes to collect us!

Father! Father! I fear for my soul

As you should

Father! Father! Make sense of the right

Let's turn back our horse

And flee from this unsightly terror

That is trembling through these woods..

My dear young one I hear it clear

The hooing owl burrows near

No Tophet trolls or urchin fear

There's nothing here to harm you.

Child you're beautiful

Come lie with the Erl King

Child, you're beautiful

Come quiet, come willing

The gifts I could give to you

The wind and the wild river spring

Child you're beautiful

Come quiet, come willing

Father gallops frantically,

Trembling with dread

For when he reached the weeping hearth

The child was dead.

Written by Ghost Bees/Tasseomancy, inspired by the poem/legend of Der Erlkönig

(Danish Folktale about an anxious young boy being carried home at night by his father on horseback. He begins to see and hear beings his father does not; the father asserts reassuringly naturalistic explanations for what the child sees – a wisp of fog, rustling leaves, shimmering willows. Finally the child shrieks that The Erl King is about to take him away. The father makes faster for home. There he recognizes that the boy is dead.
In the original Scandinavian version of the tale, the antagonist was the Erlkönig's daughter rather than the Erlkönig himself; the female elves, or elvermø, sought to ensnare human beings to satisfy her desire, jealousy and lust for revenge.)