2003-10-29 - 9:36 p.m.
“Madalyn, I can’t remember whether I am a water sprite or a tree nymph.” The quote that never made it to the Back Page or to the Quote Bowl, because, fortunately, the Quote Bowl had not yet been invented. (Now that it has, I have had to eat a mouthful of words; and still I persist in saying regretful things.)
We laughed over this puzzle for several weeks; yet, each time I hear “The Stolen Child” sung, or read Yeats’ original, I remember that this was once a serious query.
I used to think that, could it be possible, I came from Nickle Creek, a stream that wound through the Old Growth redwoods into a crevice in the coastal mountains and finally emptied into the ocean from the Southern tip of Crescent Beach (the namesake of Crescent City). It is here, I am sure, my true parents met and broke all tradition between the Water Sprites and Tree Nymphs. To hide the secret, they exchanged me for the child that, I guess, I am.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.
Thank you, John, for inspiring the memory that is most fitting on a crisp, damp night like this is.
