The Ballad of the Fiddler

He had played by the cottage fire

Till the dancing all was done,

But his heart kept up the music

When the last folk had gone.

So he came through the half-door softly

And wandered up the hill,

In the glow of his heart's desire

That was on the music still.

And he passed the blackthorn thicket,

And he heard the branches groan,

As they bowed beneath the burden

Of the white fruit of the moon.

And he came to the fairy circle

Where none but the wise may sit:

And blindness was on him surely

For he sat in the midst of it.

And maybe his heart went dreaming,

Or maybe his thoughts went wide,

But he took his battered old fiddle

And he took the bow from his side.

And he said, "I will play them such music

As never a fairy heard."

He said, "I will play them the music

I stole from the throat of a bird."

And the sound of his lilt went straying

By valley and stream and sedge

Till the little white stars went dancing

Along the mountain's edge.

And things came out of the bushes

And out of the grassy mound

And joined their hands in a circle

And danced to the fiddle's sound.

And quicker and sweeter and stranger

The notes came hurrying out

And joined with a shriek and a whistle

In the dance of the Goblin Rout.

And all night long on the green lands

They danced in a 'wildered ring.

And every note of the fiddle

Was the shriek of a godless thing.

And when the winter morning

Came whitely up the glen,

The Fiddler's soul fled whistling

In the rout of the Fairy Men.