THE ROWAN CANTICLES - Canto XVI - My Mother's Ghost
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 XVI
MY MOTHER’S GHOST
The soul's patina, etched by days,
Resembles all nature's displays.
Spied close, it seems a work of flaws,
A crisscross whose haphazard cause
At discrete moments can't be known,
Like motes perturbed when light is shone.
Yet, if the eye should draw away
A lifetime's distance, that moiré
Of mixing patterns soon recedes
To Fate holding its shiny beads.
Unsure how many lifetimes, strung
Along her soul's vast circlet, hung
About her, fair Gudrunlod kept
Her moments open, clean and swept
As doorways should be, so she thought
While strolling past fresh fishes caught
And thrown like coins in wooden bins
Beside old fishmarms scraping fins
And scales from choicer specimens.
Their men, following regimens
From fathers handed down to sons,
Knitted at nets and bragged of tons
Of seafox, bleddies, croats and selps
In schools that boiled among the kelps.
"What fish be that one? There, with wings?"
Gudrunlod asked, new at such things.
"Pretty child, quick, make you a wish!
That one there's called a wizardfish.
Rare though, yes, so it costs much more
Than, say, those bleddies caught near shore,"
Replied the toothless, grinning marm.
"To eat it, then, will do no harm?"
"Gods, no! ‘Tis a delicacy.
What sort's your money? Let me see."
"First your price, please, for that one there."
"Oh, that one? No fish can compare!
Twenty coppers. My lowest price."
"For one fish?" "Child, take my advice,
No monger's fairer here than me.
Wait! Wait! Your fish! Come back! No, three!
Three coppers for the wizardfish?
Three for two? For three? Damn that swish!"
She spat, disgusted at her loss.
Gudrunlod gave her head a toss
Then strolled off down the crowded quay
To purchase fish at three for three.
Wind off the waves blew through her hair;
Those long dark curls flew in the air
And so she tugged forth from her sack
A scarf to tie her tresses back.
A sudden gasp dived down the throat
Of one fishmarm. She'd stopped mid-note.
Her singsong dangled from her jaw
As she gaped at Gudrunlod, awe
And fear both pulling at her phiz.
"Alive you walks! Yet dead you is!"
She croaked, her seat box knocked away
As she grasped at what words to say.
Gudrunlod paused, somewhat unnerved,
And did her best to stay reserved:
"Speak you to me? I know you not,"
She blanched, fast rooted to the spot.
The marm's old yellow eyes blinked wide
And shifted quick, from side to side
As if some firmer truth they sought
Than this cruel twist before them brought.
"Not know old Kladla, Silya child?
What were it, muslin, what we piled
Beneath your pretty, tangled head
When you was pulled out, cold and dead?
Poor little Galdie, 'member him?
He said, 'She's weary from her swim.'
That broke the stoutest in the crowd.
Aye. Right, aye, 'twas a muslin shroud."
Gudrunlod's thinking fell aspin,
As sudden truths slashed their way in
And burst into her heart’s dim room
Like torches thrust into a gloom.
Heart pounding, Harcto’s daughter turned
While, in her mind, a new name burned:
"Silya! Silya! My mother's name?
My father said we looked selfsame
Whilst mumbling once in fever dreams!
This old marm thinks I'm she, it seems.
Silya . . . mother . . . my mother? Please,
Oh please be you and not some tease
Of cruel coincidence or chance!”
Gudrunlod walked, now in a trance,
Picking her way through men and ropes
Like someone, who, just blinded, gropes
In novel darkness for her door.
"And you will hide the truth no more!"
She threatened, anger on her breath.
"Before your soul flies off to death
You'll tell me all, oh Father dear.
All day into the past you peer.
Like clouds, it rolls behind your eyes!
You gaze upon its private skies,
Yet spit upon it like a foe!"
Tides sucked at pilings, just below
Worn planks that creaked beneath her weight
As she stepped past a fetid grate
Where slops into the sea did spill
Fed by a gray, unwholesome rill.
Onward past posts, sunk fast in stones,
Like scales fastened to earthen bones,
She ran that seawall esplanade.
Great whales, spied in a churning pod
––Bellies ribbed like capsized dories––
Spun the sea near promontories
That loomed above the white-capped swells.
Then, suddenly, there pealed out bells,
Plangent voices from the tower
Tolling out the sunset hour.
Gudrunlod stared up at the keep,
Breathtaking in its mighty sweep,
Stabbed by a bridge straddling a fosse
In which great waves played slap and toss.
Above them, stone steps rose up high,
Serrating sections of the sky
Where, at a portcullis, they stopped.
Here iron spikes into them dropped.
"An arid place where sea froths white,"
She thought, awed slightly by its height
And dark, forbidding dignity.
"What is it? Some iniquity?
Some fear that haunts her mem'ry still?
Pulled out . . . so drowned? Did her he kill?
No. Fairer be. Not he, no, no.
Gentle, his soul, this I do know.
What then? What is it, hurts him so?
Such sadness cannot help but show.
See it, I do. More, in this place,
As if it laughed some old disgrace
Up at him there, hid in the dunes,
Weaving his seagrass into runes
To save my Devlin, Crone’s Head mad,
From clodhoppers who think he's bad.
And what of you, sweet jewel of boys?
My stunning man who held your poise,
Yea, as the Crone's Head leached its brew
Into your head before you flew.
Our periapt is nearly done,
My father says. No easy one
Is this, because of who you are.
Your curse. That tree. Its wyrd flies far
To stalk you, says he. Deadly strong.
Yet you’ve held out and lived this long.
Soon, in shield magic, safe you'll be,
Safe to return and pledge to me.”
Then, high upon a balcony
Thrust jaw-like out above the sea,
Gudrunlod seven figures spied,
Their blue robes by sun splashes pied.
Into the swells, some object dropped,
Near where the feeding fishes hopped.
It caused a stir among the schools
And left the sea awash with jewels.
Continue to Canto XVII →
As Harcto weaves his periapt for Devlin on the dunes, Gudrunlod returns and confronts him with her dead mother Silya’s name.