The Waterboys - The Stolen Child (1988)

"The Stolen Child" https://youtu.be/mVSN9DMvl6I

New The Waterboys videos!
"Peace of Iona" https://youtu.be/jr-NPYsi7jY
"Old England" https://youtu.be/j7_3bIM_K94

"The Stolen Child" was released in 1988 on The Waterboy's album, Fisherman's Blues. The song includes lyrics by Yeats and a beautiful lilting melody....making for one of my favorites on an album chocked full of classic Waterboys tunes! The lyrics are mystical and strange...it's lovely the way they string together....how amazing are the images and flow of this poem? Remastered audio!

The poem was written in 1886 and is considered to be one of Yeats's more notable early poems. The poem is based on Irish legend and concerns faeries beguiling a child to come away with them. Yeats had a great interest in Irish mythology about faeries resulting in his publication of Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry in 1888 and Fairy Folk Tales of Ireland in 1892. The places mentioned in the poem are in Leitrim and Sligo where Yeats spent much of his childhood.

[Lyrics]
Come away, human child
to the water
Come away, human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
for the world's more full
of weeping than you can
understand

Where dips the rocky highland
of Sleuth Wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
there we've hid our faery vats
Full of berries
and of reddest stolen cherries

Come away, human child
to the water
Come away, human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
for the world's more full
of weeping than you can
understand

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
the dim gray sands with light
Far off by furthest Rosses
we foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances
mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
to and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles
while the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep

Come away, human child
to the water
Come away, human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
for the world's more full
of weeping than you can
understand

Where the wandering water gushes
from the hills above Glen-Car
In pools among the rushes
the scarce could bathe a star
We seek for slumbering trout
and whispering in their ears
We give them unquiet dreams;
leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
over the young streams

Away with us he's going
the solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
of the calves on the warm hillside;
Or the kettle on the hob
sing peace into his breast
Or see the brown mice bob
around and around the oatmeal-chest

For he comes, the human child
to the water
He comes, the human child
to the water and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
from a world more full
of weeping than he can
understand
Human child
human child
With a faery, hand in hand
from a world more full of
weeping than he can
understand...
than he can understand...
he can understand...

Видео The Waterboys - The Stolen Child (1988) канала MetalGuruMessiah