Loreena McKennitt - Stolen child

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats
There we've hid our fairy vats
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.

Chorus:
Come away, oh human child
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy hand in hand
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light
By far off furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.

Chorus

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.

Chorus

Away with us he's going
The solemn-eyed
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.

For he comes, the human child
To the waters and the wild
With a fairy hand in hand
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand.


Poem by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
Music by Loreena McKennitt
From: Elemental (1985).

Live version: Live in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts (1995).

Another live version appears on Troubadours on the Rhine (2012).

The song can also be found on The journey so far - The Best of Loreena McKennitt (2014).

The lyrics are printed in the CD-booklet (thanks to Kevin Eckard for pointing me at some typing errors); some notes on them:

When I visited Ireland in 1999 I bought a pocket book Fairy Tales of Ireland by W.B. Yeats [Roberts Books, London, 1998] and it has the poem "The Stolen Child". This leads me to the following remarks:

 
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last modified: 25 January 2014