The Mad Fiddler - Têtes Raides

Not from the northern road

Not from the southern way

First his wild music flowed

Into the village that day

He suddenly was in the lane

The people came out to hear

He suddenly went, and in vain

Their hopes wished him to appear

His music strange did fret

Each heart to wish’t was free

It was not a melody, yet

It was not no melody

Somewhere far away

Somewhere far outside

Being forced to live, they

Felt this tune replied

Replied to that longing

All have in their breasts

The lost sense belonging

To forgotten quests

The happy wife now knew

That she had married ill

The glad fond lover grew

Weary of loving still

The maid and boy felt glad

That they had dreaming only

The lone hearts that were sad

Felt somewhere less lonely

In each soul woke the flower

Whose touch leaves earthless dust

The soul’s husband’s first hour

The thing completing us

The shadow that comes to bless

From kissed depths unexpressed

The luminous restlessness

That is better than rest

As he came, he went

They felt him but half-be

Then he was quietly blent

With silence and memory

Sleep left again their laughter

They tranced hope ceased to last

And but a small time after

They knew not he had passed

Yet when the sorrow of living

Because life is not willed

Comes back in dreams' hours, giving

A sense of life being chilled

Suddenly each remembers

It glows life a coming moon

On where their dream-life embers

The mad fiddler’s tune