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<\/a>\nAncient Dvin Excavation<\/em><\/p>\n
Culled from:\u00a0\u00a0Catastrophes and Disasters<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Song of the Sorrowing Harp<\/strong><\/p>\n On the east coast of Scotland, in a castle hard by the North Sea, lived a lord who had two daughters, the elder one dark, the younger fair.\u00a0 As sometimes happens, the maidens were rivals – although the younger sister did not know it and the elder would not admit it – and something occurred between them that caused a ghost to speak.<\/p>\n A young lord came courting.\u00a0 Quite properly, he paid formal addresses to the elder sister, but his eyes always strayed to the younger.\u00a0 He rode by her at the hunt, he danced with her in the hall.\u00a0 And all the while, the dark gaze of the elder sister followed him.\u00a0 She made no complaint, biding her time.<\/p>\n Early one morning, the elder maiden asked her sister to walk by the seashore.\u00a0 As they strolled, the fair sister spoke guilelessly about the dashing visitor.\u00a0 The elder said little, but at a place where the waves beat against massive rocks, she acted.\u00a0 With a swift blow, she knocked her sister off balance and into the foaming sea.<\/p>\n The waves closed over the fair maiden’s head and clawed at her hair with icy fingers.\u00a0 She rose gasping to the surface and screamed to her sister, but there was no response.\u00a0 She heard only the roaring of the waters and the sharp cries of gulls as they wheeled in the sky above.\u00a0 The dark sister stood on the shore rocks, motionless as a carved statue.\u00a0 With a steady, unperturbed gaze, she watched her sister’s hopeless struggle.\u00a0 The young maiden sank, rose again for a moment and cried out pitifully, then sank again beneath the surging skirts of foam.<\/p>\n The dark one kept her vigil there for a time, observing the violence of the waves with satisfaction.\u00a0 Then she ran home to her father’s hall and, weeping, told a false tale, saying how her sister had slipped on the rocks and drowned.\u00a0 The people searched the shore for her, but they could not find her body.\u00a0 They made great mourning in the months that followed.\u00a0 Afterward, the young lord, bereft of the fair sister, sought consolation with the dark, and this was gladly given.<\/p>\n But the fair sister’s body, drawn by wind and tide and cradled in the killing waves, drifted along the Scottish shore and into a calm loch, far from her father’s lands.\u00a0 A miller at the loch’s edge spied the golden hair stirring beneath the surface and gently pulled the body from the water.<\/p>\n It happened that a wandering minstrel – a harper famed throughout Scotland – was staying with the miller.\u00a0 He helped the man to give her a burial, and moved by her beauty, he cut three strands of the golden hair ands strung them into his harp.<\/p>\n Eventually, the harper took leave of the miller and went on his way, traveling from castle to castle to sing before the lords of the land.\u00a0 In the months that followed, the harp played from the minstrel with a tenderness that brought tears to the eyes of its listeners, and the harper grew to cherish the golden strings.<\/p>\n At length he came to the stronghold of the maiden’s father, although he did not know it for what it was.\u00a0 The minstrel was welcomed and feasted, as was the custom then.\u00a0 In the evening, when the fires were lit and the flames cast flickering shadows in the hall, the man drew out his harp and set it before him, making ready to sing.\u00a0 The dark sister settled on a bench to listen, flanked by her father and by the young lord she loved.<\/p>\n But before the harper could touch them, the golden strings shimmered in the firelight, they trembled of their own accord.\u00a0 A sweet familiar voice eddied around the company, and when the dark sister heard the words it sang, her face grew pale and tight.\u00a0 Her fate had come upon her, and well she knew it.<\/p>\n “Farewell to the lord my father,” sang the harp softly.\u00a0 “Farewell to my lady mother.”<\/p>\n The harp paused and the company watched it in horrified silence.\u00a0 Then the strings spoke once more, loud and wailing this time.<\/p>\n “And woe to my sister, who murdered me.”<\/p>\nLegend Du Jour!<\/h3>\n
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