Topic: Come Away, Golden Queen

Liannan

Date: 2009-06-29 10:19 EST
"Come away, golden queen Little one, look ahead To the fields ever green To the living, not the dead Bring your joys and your sorrows Look ahead to the morrow Never back to the past To the life that could not last Come away, golden queen Little one, look ahead From the pain not foreseen Forget the honoured dead ..."

The ethereal voices swept through the lands, calling, calling, always calling to their lost lady. She had gone from them, many moons before, heartsick and weary of life among her kin, and they missed her. For she had been one of their Queens, she of the golden hair, she who had led them in dances and mischief and joyful song for all the ages of this earth and others.

But now she was gone, and they searched for her, high and low, in forest and glade, in city and town, on land and by sea, and still there was no sign of the maid of the golden hair. And they cursed the name of the one who had stolen her heart, who had given her joy and foolishly risked it all to return to his home, to his family, to the sorrow of knowing that a year passed within their realm was a hundred years passed in his own. He, too, they had searched for, to lure him back in hopes that with her mortal lover returned, their little queen would return. To no avail.

Was it true, they wondered, that she no longer lingered within this world, but had found a new home elsewhere" Was it true that she had no love for the lush green of Eire and the Land of the Ever Young" They could not conceive of it, and so their search continued, by hill and dale, through mountains, across plateaus, always, always calling for her.

Yet her name was never spoken, for she had cast it off with the rest of her life. No longer would she be the maid of the golden hair, for that title had not kept her love beside her, nor had it saved him from the death he had chosen. He was gone, and with him, her wish to be as she was.

Her immortality, once such a blessed gift, was now a curse, keeping her living when the one she longed for most of all was dead and buried, remembered only in legend and song. Her mischief remained, sweet and impish, the only part of her recognisable from the Sidhe woman she had once been.

She did not answer them. They did not know if she heard, and so they kept looking, calling, singing to her, wanting her to return to them, to give her back the joy in life and love that she had once known, had once blessed them with knowing. For without their Golden Queen, they were as whispers on the wind, forgotten, stories told of their exploits as entertainment for children, where once they had been feared and respected as the fair ones of old.

And still, if you listen on a clear moonlit night, you may hear them as they call to her, pleading for the golden hair to return.

"Come away, golden queen Little one, look ahead To the fields ever green To the living, not the dead ..."