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To support the development of this site and the work of soul friendship you are invited to express your appreciation through the spiritual practice of Dana

"Come Away Human Child"

“Come away, human child to

the water and the wild

where the fairy boats go by and the

world’s more full of weeping

  than you can understand.”

William Butler Yeats

This Irish storyteller  loves to set stories around poetry. The above lines come from William Butler Yeats’. I love to combine poetry and stories told about what we call in Ireland ‘the good people’ These are the people we refer to as the fairy folk.

This story is called “Come Away, Human Child.”

During a time that once was and has gone forever but soon returning, there was a disappearing.  No one ever quite knew why this was.  Some said that it never happened at all.  There are others who whisper in the dark hours before the morning that it happens all the time. Some say that it only happens to the most beautiful, talented, gorgeous and gifted.  In that sense, the disappearance happens to each and every one of us.

The disappearance that  is rarely spoken about takes place when the cradle rocks. It takes place when a home is graced with new life that cries in wonder not yet knowing that the world is more full of weeping than you can understand.  The disappearance takes place during the time when the moon is hidden from the sky for three nights in succession and darkness covers the land.

In the magical land of Erin, this disappearance is known as the arrival of the changeling.  It is said that this change, this disappearance of what once was beautiful happens in one night.  For some this is true. For others the changeling arrives slowly and almost without knowing.  That it arrives is certain.

The Changeling arrives from the other world.  It comes from far beyond the ocean of time. Where once it too was a child of light, now it is seen as ugly.  It is seen as wooden and inactive old and impaired.  It is seen as something that does not belong.  It does not belong in the homeplace by the hearth.  It is not acceptable.  It has to be put away.  It is to be got rid of.

In Erin it is said that one of the ways the changeling is got rid of is through fire.  This is the ancient way of transformation.  Fire turns base metal into gold.  Some say it turns sinners into saints and saints into martyrs.

In times that once were and have gone forever but are soon returning, the changeling was roasted on the fire using a griddle.  Some say this is still the method that is most effective.  Others say that it only deepens the disappearance.

Before roasting the changeling, however, you must get it to speak.  You will know it by the sound of the voice.  You always know the truth in the sound of the voice.  If only you will listen.  The disappearance of the child of beauty often makes us sit up and listen.

The changeling is as old and older than time.  It lives in ways we have forgotten.  It senses in ways we once knew.  It loves to learn.  More than anything else it loves to know the new.  It may be old. It may appear wooden and out of the ordinary.  It knows things the head cannot know.

You have to cast a spell. You make the changeling spellbound with interest.  You have to do something that has never been done before.  You have to be creative in ways that are new. You have to enter the heart of imagination and impossibility. You have to go a little crazy and do something that does not make sense. Then you have to wait.

This is what you have to do if you want the child of wonder that cries in the world to return. In old tales the spells are given by an outsider.  This is usually a woman.  She literally conjures up a spell that will be used to have the changeling speak.

Once the changeling speaks its own sound in its own voice it has lost its protection.  It can be taken from the security of the cradle and roasted on the griddle.  Then wit this act of violence it is hoped that the real child of beauty will return.  It is hoped that that which is ugly will be transformed.

There are those who move in dark woods.  There are those who live out on the river and fish for the bones of lost children who tell a different story.  It is the story not of transformation by fire but by air and water.

They who live on the river of life tell the story of the singing.  They tell of the song that is sung when the night is upon the land and the moon is disappeared for three nights.  In the deep silence of the darkness a woman’s voice is heard. She comes singing into the circle of time out of the circle of love.

She sings:

Come away human child to the water.

She sings:

Come away human child to the water and the wild.

To hear this voice in the darkness of the night invites the return to the homeplace.  It invites all changelings to return to heart and hearth.  It invites all those exiled from love to sit by the fire and be warmed by the singing that puts flesh on bones.

Who is this woman? Who is this singer of songs that invites the return of love?  Those who live on the river and live beneath the river say she is the Goddess Danu.

She is the one who give gifts.  She is the one who gave her name in the word donation.  She is the one who donates the gift of union with love that is unconditional whether you are ugly, unacceptable, a lose, unsuccessful or any other way in which you are changed from a being of beauty and spellbound in this world of time and illusion.

She calls you to come away.  She calls you to come to the ocean.  The giver of all life, she calls to take you sailing on this ocean of life that is love.  She is one of the good people.  She is queen of the fairy folk who though driven underground know this world’s too full of weeping so she is come to take you home.

So in the dark night when the moon is hidden from the sky for three successive nights, listen. She is calling you.  She is calling you to return to love.  She calls you to speak you own sound without fear of fire that tells you that you are ugly.

She comes to tell you about fear. She says:

Our deepest fear is not that we are
inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel
insecure around you.

We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is
within us.

It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone.

And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence
automatically liberates others."

©  Tony Cuckson 2007 -2009