Rí na Sí, pronounced Ree na Shee, is the Irish for the King of the Fairies.

This is Mo's first song in The Snowmelt River. But while in the book we hear the first two verses only, here I've provided the complete air. The song is almost certainly ancient and is bewitchingly beautiful. . .

 

 

 

A mother came while stars were paling
Wailing round a lonely stream
Thus she cried, while tears were falling
Calling on the Fairy King…

“Why with spells, my child caressing
Courting him with fairy joy.
Why destroy a mother’s blessing?
Wherefore steal my baby boy?”

O’er the mountains, through the wildwoods,
Where her child would love to play,
Where the grass is green and rarest,
There she wanders day by day.

There she wanders, growing fonder
Of the child that was her joy,
But I know that way up yonder
There she’ll meet her baby boy


(My late mother would sing it to me as a lullaby when the world was young. She would sometimes sing it in Irish, when it sounded even more hauntingly poetic. I adopted the term Shee in my fantasy series, The Three Powers, for my fierce female warriors from the same Gaelic word for "magic")