Its late and the house is completely silent and as I'm getting up to go take a divinely hot bath, I can hear a train in the distance. There are train tracks about a mile away from the house, they are back off the main roads and so I never even know they are there--except at night when the house is so quiet and the trains roll through. My mother grew up in a small fishing town off of Lake Erie in Ohio. Its about an hour and a half from where I grew up, and nearly every weekend (literally) of my young life we went and spent in that little town with my grandparents. We even lived there for a year or so when I was four or five. There are train tracks right behind St. Mary's Catholic church which is just a few houses from my grandparents. Nights spent there are always punctuated with the sounds of the trains blowing through. My great-grandmother, so my grandmother has told me innumerable times in my life, stood too close to the train tracks when she was young and had all the toes on her right foot sliced right off! As you can imagine, this favorite tale was always accompanied with stern warnings to stay off the tracks. I know that some portion of it is true as she really did loose her toes to the train tracks...but how it actually happened has been lost in this little myth of our family. "HOW could she stand so close to the train tracks that just her toes got cut off," the cousins whispered to each other when we heard the trains at night and were suppose to be sleeping. "If she was standing that close, don't you think she would have been squashed, doesn't the box of the train overlap the tracks??" I cannot imagine how often this story has been told, first to my mother and her 8 siblings and then to all the cousins that have come since, I can't walk across the tracks even today, or listen to the train run the rails in quiet of my own home, without thinking about great-grandma and how her toes got sliced off from standing too close to the tracks.

There is a ballad that I collect versions of, about Thomas Rhymer, or True Tom, or Thomas de Erceldone. Thomas was a man who really existed who was said to have disappeared for seven years into the realm of faery when he caught the eye of an elven queen. When he returned, he was "gifted" with a tongue that could only tell truth. To a bard, this was a difficult gift, one that could bring more trouble than it was worth. There are still some of his prophecies in some very old books. The ballad can be read here:

http://www.bartleby.com/101/367.html

My favorite three stanzas are:

'O see ye not yon narrow road,
So thick beset wi' thorns and briers?
That is the Path of Righteousness,
Though after it but few inquires.

'And see ye not yon braid, braid road, 45
That lies across the lily leven?
That is the Path of Wickedness,
Though some call it the Road to Heaven.

'And see ye not yon bonny road
That winds about the fernie brae? 50
That is the Road to fair Elfland,
Where thou and I this night maun gae.

I love them because they open up a third possiblity (and the third possibility is always the most mysterious)...our society tends to have an "either or" mentality...things are black and white, moral or immoral, conservative or liberal, bad or good...clearly defined options. In this poem, the writer suggest there is not just a choice of heaven or hell, but for the lucky, perhaps a third choice to fair Elfland. Anyway, I've always enjoyed playing with the old ballad format because it is so fun to write. While some might scorn the cadence and mis-structure to aid in a set rhyme scheme, I find them a treat now and then. So here was my addition to the ballad, my twist on the True Tom/ Tam Lin story:

Ballad of Aileen
4/22/00

Her hair was long with raven curls,
Her eyes were emerald green;
Her form was lithe with supple grace
As ever eyes had seen.

With heart and hand she pledged her troth,
A gentle man was he,
To one who loved her spirit more
Than that which eyes could see.

One eve while walking in the wood,
An elven lord she met;
He slipped out from a stand of trees
Just as the sun had set.

Sea foam washed his eyes pale blue,
And sunlight graced his hair;
His voice, like music, called her name;
His hand reached out to her.

When years spent searching near and far
Had passed her husband by,
She walked out of the woods one day
Just as the sun rose high.

Her raven curls were blacker yet,
Her eyes were painful bright,
Her skin, now pale as milky pearls,
Shone with a fevered light.

Without a question or a word
He took her home once more,
And through the years she loved him well,
And the daughters that she bore.

Some nights she heard the Hunter’s horns,
And hoof beats all around;
While other nights the music called
As she danced on moonlit ground.

Eyes too bright, and hair undone
She’d wander in at dawn;
Her daughters braided up her hair
And tied her apron on.

When many years had passed her by,
And raven locks had grayed,
She’d tend the grave with flowers bright
Where now her husband laid.

One eve while walking in the wood,
She met her elven lord,
Once more she took his outstretched hand
And cut her earthen cord.

Her daughters heard the music not,
Nor the laughter in the air,
As they smoothed her dress for burial
And braided up her hair.