The Tryst: a modern folktale
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and Kayna, which I suppose you’ve heard. She has a plaintive, aching voice, and puts the melody across very movingly, accompanied only by her guitar. In the last verses of the song, Kayna’s friends become concerned for her absence, and, as dusk falls, take torches and searchlights into the woods, calling out her name and seeking her every which way. At last they find her, sat weeping beneath the pear tree, clutching at the merlin feathers that she has picked out of the grass. On seeing her friends with their lights, she begs them to help her find the merlin, and to humour her they agree, and in the song they go on searching forever as the last refrains die away, their lights shining between the boughs, and Kayna calling again and again for the flown merlin, her lost Kaveran.
I believe the pear tree blew down one year, and the clearing has longsince been enclosed by the garden of a cottage that was built nearby; but a great deal of the woodland still remains, and, on dusky summer evenings, drinkers with loose tongues and colourful imaginations will say that sometimes you can still see the lights between the trees, and hear a mournful call on the breeze; but you know that song is so well written and sad that it would turn any drunkard sentimental, and they play it often in that part of the world. The song is called ‘The Pear Tree’, but I have called the story of it ‘The Tryst’.
The end
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