The Legend of The Winged Boy

 

When the last bard falls silent
And every storyteller buried,
When all the writings have withered to dust
The Roman rulers’ names forgotten
They will still remember you, young man.

Even at their final hour
People speak your name.
And the wind will carry it
Over land and time.
With awe in their voices,
They tell of your deeds
And can no longer say
Who first told them of you.

They gather in your honour
Build monuments of untold height
And shine the light across the wall
To signal your return.

[Music]

In those times the Romans ruled.
Only the north of the isle was free.
There the brave still threw their spears,
Battering the conquerors’ shields.
No weapons would ever break their will
No coin could purchase their consent.
And so the Romans unleashed the stony snake of Hadrian.
Over hills and valleys it wound,
From one coast to another,
Dividing farms and pastures,
People and animals,
Cutting the north off from the rest.

Many folk defied the wall,
Tried every plan they could
To breach the stony curse,
But all these reckless heroes perished
Murdered by the enemy’s lances,
Their lost lives lay unsung and wasted.
The fishermen’s nets stayed empty then
The farmers’ seeds remained unsown.
And only the birds up high in the sky
Lived without fear of the stony snake.

[Music]

 

And yet these times of suffering
Were also times of wonder.
First a single feather was found,
Then over the roofs of the huts
Was seen a shadow,
And with a flourish of white
A daughter of the north saw
A man preparing to fly:
A fine figure he had, and wings.
She gained his trust
And her smile soon took on
A glint of knowledge.
She had just a few brief days of happiness
Then he vanished again.
But in her eyes the light lived on
The shine would never leave her lips
Ever again.

[Music + Scene: The woman and the angel]

As these days became just memory
She bore the son of her love
And word went round the land
It was a wondrous being.
Druids came to view the offspring
And warriors to praise.
His wings still small
They clung to the hope
One day they would be
A people of the skies.

Sheltered from the Romans’ gaze
He grew to be a man.
Teased and ridiculed by some
His love was for the birds, the clouds,
And for his mother,
Who he begged, time and again,
To tell of his father, the foreigner.
Soon came the time
Of the fledgling flights,
Trying to lift, to leap,
To raise himself above
The hills of the north.
His mother had to be there too
To watch as he beat his frenzied wings
But fell back down to earth,
Down to the fields and meadows.
For doubt still won
And held him to the ground.

But soon the runs were longer
And his wing-strokes
Grew in strength.
His feet now barely touched the ground
A at last the air swept him up and away.

[Music]

So the youth became a child of the sky.
And the folk of the north
Raised their eyes to follow him
And found their hope and pride again.
Only his mother was still afraid,
Forbade him to fly across the wall
Into the occupied land.

But what are words of warning, when
The wind sings over from afar.
And how easy it is to forget
Every word you have heard
When you see the endless expanses
And so his child’s curiosity won
And swept the youth over the wall
Into enemy land.

He took the risk much more than once.
No, time and again he flew across.
And carefree cockiness
Went with him all the way.
He showed the Romans how he flew
Teased them even, called them fools.
Too reckless not one day
To be caught by the Roman guards.

While the northern tribes gathered to hear
The bards’ hymns of praise
The Romans shone lights across the wall
As a sign the youth had been seen
Who so brazenly flaunted
The law of the stony snake.

Before dawn soldiers broke down
The doors of their huts
Tore the shirts from young men’s backs
And demanded of mothers to tell
Where the winged youth could be found.
But neither threats nor torture
Could force the secret from them.

And so it went, night after night,
But fortune refused to favour
The Roman troops
And the shining lights
Signalled to the people in the north:
The winged youth is still at large!

Then one day the youth saw a man,
Tall, with wings, on a hilltop.
His heart beat faster;
How long had he waited
To meet one of his kind.
Could it even be his father?
And as he approached with a cautious greeting,
The winged man beckoned him silently over.
Too late he saw the false feathers fixed to the winged jacket
And now the costume fell away.
Two Roman hands grasped him
And held him captive.
It no longer helped to beat his wings,
Nor could biting loosen the grip.
The youth was under Roman power.
Pushed into a cage, he was swallowed up
By a fortress’ walls.

That day his mother waited for her son
In vain.
And when in the following nights no lights
Appeared from the wall
Her fears turned to certainty;
The boy would not return.
And with the mother the whole folk mourned
North of the wall.

But one night
They saw again the signalling lights
Along the length of the wall.
And two farmers swore
They had seen the youth
Flying high above in the sky.
Again and again came reports of him
Not just over Hadrian’s wall
In other places too his face was seen.
There, where walls are built between people.
There where hope has gone.
There flies the youth over land and time.

When the last bard falls silent
And every storyteller buried,
When all the writings have withered to dust
The Roman rulers’ names forgotten
They will still remember you, young man.

They gather in your honour
Build monuments of untold height
And shine the light across the wall
To signal your return.
O angel of the north.

 

Stefan Behr