Once, in the pale light of Lancashire there was a fair young maid who went by the name of Zoe. Like Ivy, she grew her fronds whilst staring at the seas and hearing the echoes of popcorn gulls drift along the promenade. Soon enough her tendrils crept forth from that place and drifted to the wild flat-lands of the Nor Folk to see castles in the air and hear sonorities in the sand. She there learned crafts of art and magicks galore in the Fine City of the Nor Witch, yet, lo it was, that she had a wicked and evil spell cast unto her. Forced asleep for a number of years her soul went a journeying.. on her quest she 'dreamed of Orchil, the dim goddess, who is under the brown earth, in a vast cavern, where she weaves at two looms. With one hand she weaves life upward through the grass; with the other she weaves death downward through the mould; and the sound of the weaving is Eternity, and the name of it in the green world is Time. And, through all, Orchil weaves the weft of Eternal Beauty, that passeth not, though its soul is Change.*' The dim goddess gave Zoe a great gift, an enchanted harp, to weave a spell of her own which would sing life back to her. So weave she did.
She played until her fingers were quick and nimble as the swimming of salmon upstream in the hot summer sun and she played until her voice found courage and joined her plucking. Soon enough, to her surprise, others sat at times and listened; And so, tentatively, she overcame her fears and played wherever and whenever people would ask her, and this she still does to this very day. Should you perchance happen upon the sweet strumming of strings in your wanderings, maybe you will hear the echoes that once did reside in caverns deep and dark, amid running waters and tumbling mosses. (*Orchil quote courtesy of William Sharp 1896- 'The Silence Of Amor, Where The Forest Murmurs').
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