The Myrðaling
A Ghost Story
A Ghost Story
Cold across the portal
through the shadow of the veil
the child shivers before me,
wild-walking the mirk.
She's thin as she'd never been
when she lay there, left,
tiny feet kicking in a stiff skin wrap,
taller too than when her kicking stopped
tiny feet kicking in a stiff skin wrap,
taller too than when her kicking stopped
alone in the bramble where the broken light fell
as the snow wound blue around her like smoke.
Now she can walk miles
through the night from the black
back corners of the winter that rides
before and after all things,
for she's passed the doored rock
for she's passed the doored rock
to the slaughtering shadow
that splits the soft loam, where
she blows like a seed that won't be sown
but must be milled on the stone of years
with a river of bones floating on tears.
She opens her mouth
and sings like the plague
for a name of her own to give her a grave.
Take mine I say--it's all I have
for a night sister here in the dying year,
where we've gone too far
where we've gone too far
to turn around, where too soon
we'll eat the bread of the dead,
where spirit can weigh
as heavy as flesh when the veil thins away.
we'll eat the bread of the dead,
where spirit can weigh
as heavy as flesh when the veil thins away.
Then the moon-girl came out of her pale disguise;
I saw my twin smile, and close her eyes.
~October 2014
revised and reposted October 2023 for Night of the Desperate Dead
Process notes: In Scandanavian folklore, a myrðaling, (from Old Norse, 'myrða,'
murder) or more properly, myling, was the ghost of a child killed by
its mother in infancy, usually the child of an unmarried woman, or of a
poor family unable to provide for it, abandoned in some unfrequented
place and forced to walk the earth seeking burial. The myling might
appear and reveal the acts of its killer in a song, or call out for a
name, when the hearer could save the spirit by saying "take mine' so
that it might then rest in consecrated ground, (as in this poem) or it
might vengefully possess the living, jumping on their backs and forcing
the victim to carry them to a graveyard, growing heavier with each step.
You can read more in this wikipedia article.
Image: The Strawberry Girl, 1777, by Joshua Reynolds
Public domain via wikiart.org
I have manipulated this image.
