Time for a live video! “Water” is one of my favorite earlier songs by Cathy McManamon, accompanied here by Alexander James Adams. There’s just something ethereal about it that stays with me.
I say favorite earlier songs because she has written some killer recent ones as well. Some of them might even show up here, once they have been officially released. Keep an eye out!
Keylor’s rage is burning for all her slaughtered kin
Pray gods we reach the back door while she’s still coming in
She spares no man or woman, her eyes blaze like the sun
She moves like nothing human – good gods, what has she done?
“Keylor’s Rage,” sung by Heather Alexander, based on lyrics in Andre Norton’s Witch World novels. Full lyrics under the cut.
Tonight’s the night of Halloween,
and the fairy court will ride;
And she that would her true love win
at Miles Cross must bide.
Happy Halloween (or Hallowe’en, depending on your spelling preference)!
In celebration, have some filkers performing everyone’s favorite traditional ballad about getting knocked up by a weird guy in the woods and having to go rescue him on Halloween before the Faerie can sacrifice him to the Devil 🙂
This version of Tam Lin is performed by Tricky Pixie, aka S.J. Tucker, Alexander James Adams, and Betsy Tinney. Lyrics are available on bandcamp.
Won’t you come with me where the water runs deep?
Where the fire heart burns and the land is asleep?
Leave your tears and pain, let your heart be unbound!
Merely melt as spring rain-
With me into the ground!
“From Out the Barrow” by Alexander James Adams, a terrifying ultimatum from something old and powerful that lives deep beneath the earth.
Step by step, we walk in the darkness!
Wink and blink, we squint at the light!
Black and blacker, loving our starkness!
Knock on your door on Halloween night!
“Undertakers from Hell” by Alexander James Adams. ‘Tis the season…
My OTHER favorite Child Ballad is “King Henry,” because it is just… bizarre. A horse and an unspecified number of greyhounds and hawks get murdered in this one, but no humans this time.
Killing your own pets to feed them to a strange giant woman who just barged into your hunting lodge TOTALLY sounds like the sort of thing a king would have to do, doesn’t it?
Wish I knew which King Henry this song was written about, because I unquestionably accept its events as historical fact.
Don’t ever listen to any version of this song other than Heather Alexander’s, because you will inevitably be disappointed. (well, the Steeleye Span version is also acceptable)
Because this post is getting attention again, I would like to append something wonderful that I recently learned. The musician you hear here is trans and now goes by the name of Alexander James Adams. Because of his obsession with fairies n’ shit, he steadfastly maintains the kayfabe story that his previous self, Heather, was a changeling and he, Alexander, was the child she replaced, but won the right to return from fairyland in a “Devil Went Down to Georgia” style fiddle duel with the faerie queen. This is a song he wrote that tells the whole story.
i’m sorry i’m adding this after already reblogging but??? the second song is a refilk of his previous song recorded pre-transition!!! which has more of his Epic Fiddle Playing
Oak, Ash, and Stag, will you come to my aid?
Huntress on High, know that I’m not afraid!
Grant me a beacon of light that can’t fade,
For the death of my kin is the price I have already paid.
“A Journey Through The Dark,” by Alexander James Adams, written for a (unfortunately not successfuly kickstarted) webseries by Matthew Morrese
I am a daughter of the glade,
and I will make no man a wife!
By Hoof and Horn I came to be;
in Song and Storm I came to life!
Leave off thy chase! Thy prize is here!
and she will love you without fear!
“Daughter of the Glade,” by S.J. Tucker, a sequel to Heather Alexander’s “Creature of the Wood,” performed by Tricky Pixie (S.J. Tucker, Alexander James Adams, and Betsy Tinney)