The Fiddler of Hårga

Take a crooked path past the frozen moor Through the whispering pine Where the shadows hang like gallows ropes And the birch trees lean in time Where the silence breaks with a scraping sound Like bone on bowstring wound There he stood in the village square Not a word, not a care With a fiddle carved of blackest sin And cold fire in his stare He played a tune too sweet, too sharp With hands too pale, too bare On a bloodless smile rode the fiddler man In his coat of smoke from a deeper land He said, “Come and dance, my bright young things, don’t mind the setting sun” And they came like moths to a furnace tune Every daughter, every son He played through dusk, he played through night Till the stars began to fall And their feet moved fast and their hearts beat slow No one heard their mothers call Through the fields, over stone, to the mountain’s bone They danced and they laughed, but their eyes were gone And the fiddler grinned as he led them wide Where the cliffs of Hårga kiss the suicide tide They danced their heels to splintered bone They danced through blood and frost They danced ‘til names were torn from them Until all sense was lost No sleep, no breath, no turning back Just fiddle, flame, and flight With every step, their lives were stripped Swallowed into night He wasn’t man, he wasn’t beast His shadow never lay Just the whisper of bow across gut and grief Pulling souls away He was fire, he was stone, he cast the spell And the dance went on 'til all the dancers fell Now if you hear that cursed tune Float through the valley dim Bolt your doors, bar your hearts And pray he skips your kin He walks with boots that leave no print Past chapel, hearth, and barn He smiles like sin with blood stained teeth And a fiddle under arm They say he waits where the snow never melts With the ghosts of Hårga bound Still dancing in a silent ring On that black, forgotten ground He’s the song, he’s the snare, he's the bloodied knife The fiddler of Hårga Coming to take your life