THE ROWAN CANTICLES - Canto XI - Mystery Mother
A Tale Told in the Ancient Manner
The Rowan Canticles is an epic poem written in doggerel tetrameter. In other words, although each line contains eight syllables and rhymes with other lines nearby, like Shakespeare, I’ve used enjambment (one line spilling over into the next) here and there, especially in dialog sections. Mostly, though, I’ve striven for iambic tetrameter, which makes for a nice rhythm. You’ll notice that couplets, quatrains and other rhyme schemes refresh with each long Canticle. The old school language of The Rowan Canticles can be dense, but hey, it’s fun and it fits the fantasy.
Each week I will post a fresh Canto here at Substack, adding to the story. You’ll find ninety-nine Cantos in all contained in the three Canticles. The work is 13,000 lines long, about the length of Homer’s The Odyssey.
I hope you enjoy it!
Odds Bodkin
Don’t forget to download the companion Glossary below for definitions of archaic words to smooth your read!
CANTO XI
MYSTERY MOTHER
When life presents us with some change
So vast, it threatens to derange
Us, shorn from what we always thought
Our lives should be, to not be caught
In questions of identity
Is challenging. It’s hard to see
Ourselves the way we used to be,
Once life mounts an insurgency.
Half-conscious, blood upon him caked,
His face like reddish dough, unbaked,
Down the sea strand Harcto wandered,
Musing whether life he'd squandered.
Position, wealth, the ears of kings,
Bright pearls, soft satins––all these things
He'd obtained in fullest measure.
Now they seemed a tawdry treasure,
Insufficient compensation
For his esteemed aberration.
The leaden dawn blew bleak and cold.
The seawall did its best to hold
Back phalanxes of toppling crests
That poured like loud, unwanted guests
Onto the strand and down the streets.
When one of those thick, curling sheets
Slammed Hartco’s head into a post,
He thought he'd given up the ghost.
Scintillas, sunk in webs of black,
Whose threads at first felt dark and slack,
Fast hardened to obsidian,
Then froze him in oblivion.
In darkness, soaked by wintry spray,
How long he lay he could not say.
Time's truth hinges upon the eye.
When shut, time fades into a lie.
It happens not, lest it we see.
Elsewise it squats eternally,
Past sewn jagged to the Future
‘Cross the Present's open suture.
At first, just voices whispered low.
Then pain. His head throbbed from the blow.
He saw a wizened fishwife's face,
Then details of a lowly place:
A candle sucking air and moths
Upon a table, piled with cloths;
A room, four or five paces wide;
Glass floats in nets, some hover's pride;
Dry beams and shadows, up above;
Fishhooks set in a hardened glove
Laid on a mantle with its fire;
Fishmen, all dressed in stained attire;
And other things his glance could glean.
"Lookit, lookit! His Lordship's bean!
Struck good it was! Most, that would kill!
He wakens. Quick, pass me that swill!"
The fishwife croaked as if to gloat
And poured some hot rum down his throat.
"All fiddle fettle are you now,
Great Sir, or will be soon, and how,
What with the treatment Bretta gives!
You came half dead. Now look! You lives!"
Bragged on the wrinkled, smelly hag.
She pulled clumped sea grass from a bag.
"For protection 'ginst the swellin'.
Gits to where the evil's dwellin'.
Help 'im up. Good. Now, more 'o tips."
She proffered more rum to his lips.
He winced and waved away the flask,
Then to his elbow rose to ask:
"How came I here? What place is this?"
"Great Sir, oh 'twas a narrow miss
'Tween you and death! Narrow indeed!
How came your skin all 'round to bleed?
Surely a knock upon the head
Won't dye a robe from blue to red.
Eh? Well, no matter. Silya there
––Gray kerchief tied up in her hair?––
She found you in the gutter lyin'
While out this morn, wax a' buyin'.
The Temple don't much frequent here.
Mostly us fishfolks, eh, my dear?
My granddaughter, see? Sweet, ain’t she?
She saved you, sir. I'll acquaint ye."
With that, the sloven rose and turned
Her face to where the candle burned,
Then hissed a quick and terse command,
Well-practiced, like a reprimand.
The green-eyed girl moved at the sound,
Began to heel, then stood her ground.
Harcto sensed a well-worn anger
Melt into a catlike languor.
The anger Harcto understood;
Mind-fires of Will burned much such wood.
The other thing he knew not of:
Magework excluded body's love.
Youth was spent in meditation.
Power crowned its consummation.
The language of a woman's looks
Unfit to mention in its books
Was, by his creed, disregarded,
Useless patter, best discarded,
A scholarly discrepancy
In Magework’s chill philosophy.
And so, as Silya neared his bed,
That gray kerchief wrapped ‘round her head,
This man of fifty years and one
Grew ill at ease, aplomb undone.
Why looked she at him with those eyes?
Was what he heard the swish of thighs?
Great Rules of Warog! Bind your thought!
This be the fool's gold Samden bought––
Fallen Mage who'd lost his power,
Traded for a maiden's flower.
His story was the first they heard
When novices. He knew each word.
A cautionary tale of woe
To kill the seed crude sin might sow.
Crude sin, the rutting ride of knaves
Who rode on slatterns, sluts and slaves;
Unwholesome, lowly, earthly, dank––
Waters of which he never drank.
Yet there she stood, soft in the light.
Indeed, a not unpleasing sight,
Though few had he known to compare.
A childlike glint muddled her stare.
Those shallow eyes of innocence
Undeepened by life's consequence
Were comforting. He knew, at least,
More times he'd sat at life's strange feast,
More arcane fare had he enjoyed,
More depths of soul had he employed
Than this child-woman ever would.
Above his thinking eyes she stood,
Then curtsied in an awkward way
And struggled with what words to say:
"You're better, sir. Of this I'm glad.
If you had died, 'twould've been sad."
"Oh yes? Why think you so?" asked he.
"Why, you protect us from the sea."
Simple words, with such conviction
Spoken, caused an odd constriction
Inside his throat, as if he wept,
Though Mages tears did not accept
And none had wet his eyes since youth.
"You know the secrets of the Truth."
“Ho, ho,” he thought. “The ‘Truth' indeed.
Truth is, my brethren saw me bleed
A pint upon the Temple floor,
Mere pint of life, no, nothing more,
Next swathes of soul burned down to ash.
Harcto's fine feast now reeks of trash.
His past to future does not fit.
His pedestal is now a pit.”
So thought the wizard in his bed,
Near wishing he'd been left for dead.
Old Bretta shoved the lass aside,
Then leaned down close, eyes glassy wide.
Like haddock, gumrot, rum and toast,
With marsh muck dug up near the coast,
Her breath commingled with her words:
"There, there, Great Sir. Here's whey and curds.
‘Tis milk food, warm. 'Twill thicken blood,
Which you lost much of, like a flood!
We washed ye clean, from crown to toe.
That bruise . . . Gods! Blacker than a crow!
I've stopped no storms, but men I've healed.
Silyie, why ain’t those bomfrets peeled?"
Asked Bretta, cackling like a crone.
She rose and left the two alone––
The man of fifty in his bed,
The maiden nurse who turned her head
To peel bomfrets by candle's light,
Her profile shining in the night.
In silence, Harcto closed his eyes.
The tallow flame spread starry skies
Throughout his lashes, clasping soft
On that far time, while stars, aloft,
Framed young Gudrunlod's countenance,
Sweet mem'ry of that circumstance.
Continue to Canto XII →
Riding north to the sea and still thinking of Gudrunlod, Devlin plucks a Crone’s Head flower in the woods near where he’s buried his stolen gold.