NEAR THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, Irish poet William Butler Yeats became actively involved in magical circles, joining The Golden Dawn, one of the legendary occult societies of the time. Yeats would say that it was a “chief influence upon his thought.” Yeats believed in fairies, not in the abstract, but as real creatures,…
Phantasmagoria: On Witches, Fairies, Ghouls and Goblins
ON JUNE 16th, 1816, LORD BYRON OPENED A BOOK he'd picked up in Britain, Phantasmagoriana, (or as translated to English, Tales of the Dead), and he and his house guests took turns reading the short stories within. His house guests were Percy and Mary Shelley, her half sister Claire Clairmont, and Dr. John Polidori. It was an ill summer, Byron and Shelley were in exile, Byron staying at the Villa Diodati in Cologny, Switzerland - the year without a summer.
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This led famously to a writing competition to see who could write the best horror story. From that night came Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Polidori's The Vampyre, considered the first English vampire novel, and the precursor to Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Drawing from that idea, herein lies poems from Shakespeare, Yeats, Spenser, Kipling, Ben Johnson and others, set to music. Musical influences range from British folk and Irish traditional, to Black Sabbath, King Crimson and Jethro Tull.
If it seems a bit theatrical at times, we beg your forgiveness, especially as it might seem more like a high school musical production than Broadway. But much like Byron's party, this party took place at home.
The imagination is a wonderful place, but at times frightening and mysterious. The quickening of the pulse, shallowness of breath, that wide eyed stare all tell you the fear is upon you, that enchantment is draping itself around you like a mantle of black cashmere.
From denizens of the underbrush, the fairies who ride wild in the moonlight, to the danse macabre - the dance of death unites us all - it's a look back at a time when people weren't so certain, weren't so brave as to believe that what we see with our eyes is all there is.
The Poems: Click the poem below for the song, video and notes.
The Fairy Pedant by W.B. Yeats
Watcher In The Woods by Dora Sigerson
Queen of the Haunted Dell by M.V. Ingram, 1894
Poem 19 by Edmund Spenser, 1594
The Sands of Dee by Charles Kingsley, 1849
The Eggshell by Rudyard Kipling, 1904
The Listeners by Walter de la Mare, 1912
Midnight by James Russell Lowell, 1842
Excerpts from William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer's Night Dream," 1595-96
The Witches' Song, from Ben Johnson's Masque of Queens, 1609
Act IV Scene I (The Witches Song) from the Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, 1606
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Watcher In The Woods by Dora Sigerson Shorter, 1906
Excerpt from from the book “The Story and Song of Black Roderick” AND I BID THEE REMEMBER how the little pale bride was wont to sit upon the mountain and watch the far lights in her father’s home quench themselves one by one. So now of how she died shall I tell thee, and of…
Queen of the Haunted Dell, by M.V. Ingram, Authenticated history of the Bell Witch, 1894.
Ingram wasn’t a poet by nature perhaps, but he made a great song lyricist. Colorful, but simple and short, unlike most of the poets of the age. He chose the moment before the Bell Witch first made her appearance to Betsy, when life was sane and magical, in a good sort of way. The truth…
Poem 19 (from Epithalamion) by Edmund Spenser, 1594
Edmund Spenser wrote Epithalamion for Elizabeth Boyle, his bride to be as wedding gift. It’s an account of their wedding day, from before dawn till late in the night, following the consummation of the marriage. Consisting of 24 stanzas, corresponding to the 24 hours of Midsummer Day, it also contains 364 lines, matching the days in a year. It follows the…
The Sands of Dee (from Alton Locke) By Charles Kingsley, 1849
The Sands of Dee is a poem within a novel, Alton Locke, written by Charles Kingsley in 1849. Like most great rock and roll, he pens the lines to impress a girl, to give words to an air she’s played on the piano. An air without words. What is an air? To the Irish, an air…
The Eggshell by Rudyard Kipling, 1904
Kipling included this little poem in his book Traffics & Discoveries in 1904. Some say it’s a children’t poem, an allegory. The Kipling society folks seem to think it’s about naval warfare. A political tale. I love the imagery, the tone. In a few short lines, Kipling creates an impossible world, where witches and egg shells can speak…
The Listeners by Walter de la Mare, 1912
Visitor to a Moonlit Churchyard by Philip James De Loutherbourg, 1790 Something is happening in The Listeners, but we never know what. We know it’s about keeping promises, keeping your word, even if there’s nobody there, nobody living at least to know that you did. Are the listeners the living or the dead? Is the…
Midnight by James Russell Lowell, 1842
MOSTLY FORGOTTEN TODAY, James Russell Lowell lived and breathed New England. Much as Mark Twain became the voice and accent of the midwest – the frontier at the time, Lowell became the archetype of the Yankee dialect. And in the process, helped define the mindset of the region. Born and living mainly his whole life…