EVERY NIGHT, BEFORE I FELL ASLEEP, my mother would sing it to me: the song of Dahut, the princess of Ys, the Mari-Morgen. She sang it in a low, gentle voice, so that for many years I didn’t realize it was meant to be a sad song.
O from where do my city’s bells now ring,
and where have my people been swept?
O where is the laughter that once lingered here,
and where is the father who wept?
She once told me it was better in French. I asked her to sing me the original, but she said that it’d been years since she’d practiced her French and that she’d only mangle it. A sadness flashed in her eyes then; even at twelve I could see it. I remember thinking it was remarkable that you could translate a song, rhyme scheme and all, and still come out with something beautiful. That you could change everything but its heart. Many years later I tried learning French, but I didn’t have the mind for languages and barely got beyond pleasantries. The anglophone’s curse, I suppose.
For most of those years I didn’t know the story behind the song, either. All I knew was that some princess with a funny name sat down and started singing about city bells and her missing father. I had a vague notion that the sea was involved, but that was it. Breton legends aren’t often brought up in rural Alberta. I only found out because of a friend from school, Steph, who
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Gareth Marks is an emerging writer of short fiction and poetry from Stratford, Ontario. He studied mathematical physics at the University of Waterloo, and is currently living in the UK where he's working towards a PhD. Aside from reading and writing, in his free time he enjoys fencing, hiking, and a good cup of tea.