There, where the lanterns have yet to rust away, each held in hand for fear of the ancient dark.
there, where the grim sky’s grey countenance
is still seen by men who call it by many names;
“perun” “earth-shaker” and first-father,” there, where the Erl-King steals the child who remembers not the song;
“child, dear child, heed not the blast of the hunter’s call,
in the dead of the night, the old hunter awakes,
he lures each child like it was game, and each he takes,
be good dear child, he comes to those who make mistakes,
He lists to the storm, and arises in scorn,
He summons his hounds with his far-sounding horn,”
and this is what is taught to each child who is born.
there, in that land, where basil is twisted into cords as a crown and a Glyph of safe passage, each a token to cross the dark waters, there, each family see’s sundry virtues in inscribing blackest basalt with words passed down to them from father’s father to son’s son, and most excellent to them is the sight of the child sitting by the hearth, grim-faced and ash-handed.
For these children are scorched with the face of the flame, it is to them like the moth who, in his adoration, annihilates himself into the fire, their bliss is the bliss of the bee to clover, covered as with the dew and pollen of shining spring.
these children, they speak of things forgotten, the memories of men who have crossed the waters, in the days before the father’s of their fathers, each word, coming to them first dimly than dappled as if lighted by dawn, then to them cinder, the very sons of egni; the ancestor of ash, speak to them.
The Cinders cry out “ we are living flame yet light shall pass from us, we must decrease so a fire of another kind may increase, flame to ash, ash to fire of another kind, and this to, is a light, Come and anoint your hands within the hearth,then you will grasp a new Light”
and so are called the children to the hearth, turned grim-faced, light-living and ash-handed.
After the flame has blackened them with blessing, day after day, delicate little dots, points of purest green emerald are seen by the ash-handed, each leaf of emerald twisting their sight into a braid of light which covers their eyes, each eye inflamed and agleam with cataracts; as bright as a well-cut emerald.
Though blinded to the light of our laterns,
the light within their eye shows them the dark waters, a sea of purest glass, stained emerald green.
once their eyes have the depths of the ancient sea, Then, and only then, do the parents of the ash-branded child bring them before a tribunal to divine if they deserve blessings drawn from the book of Viridian letters, each page of which is said to be a song sung by the sylvan oracle, the sound of which carves spells upon trees and stone, the sound of which, grants the ash-handed a new-sight.
He is asked “If your soul be as bee to clover, if your eyes have the depth of an ancient sea, if your shade be Dawn-dappled as with a flame, if even egni opens the mouths of his sons to you, answer us truthfully concerning these three questions.”
to us has been passed, however, only the second of the three questions, which I shall now supply in full;
“What’s here? “ to which he must reply “a dead babe in the fairy ring” having divined the answers, he is then wrapt about with new, white garments, laid down to rest before them, and they each begin to sing, and this is the song sang of them;
“More swift than lightning can he fly
About this airy welkin soon,
And, in a minute’s space, descry
Each thing that’s done below the moon.
There’s not a hag
Or ghost shall wag,
Or cry, ‘ware goblins! where he goes;
But changeling he,
Their feats will see
And return home with a ho, ho, ho!
Whene’er such wanderers he may meet,
As from their night-sports they trudge home,
With counterfeiting voice he may greet,
And call them on with him to roam:
Through woods, through lakes;
Through bogs, through brakes;
Or else, unseen, with them he goes,
All in the nick,
To play some trick,
And frolic it, with ho, ho, ho!
Sometimes he comes like a man,
Sometimes an ox, sometimes a hound;
And to a horse? he can!
To trip and trot about them round.
But if to ride
his back they stride,
More swift than wind away he’ll go,
O’er hedge and lands,
Through pools and ponds,
hurry! laughing! ho, ho, ho!”
at the end of their hymn, one comes about them, masked,his mask is the wood of an old oak, but his eyes, his eyes burn with the very same living fire, he snatches the child away, to baptize him, as with waters of an ancient sea, purest emerald.
and for a moment, the sea and the eye gains a lustre, as if the silver of the stream where shines the moon, as if the silver unstained and daven of a king, and upon the witching hour, he returns the child upon the banks, and there he rests, just as a flame rests in ash, the waves of emerald in the deep, the light of dawn within the moon and the man as a child, and then he awakes.
Zothyrian Revisionist 