Last night, I headed over to the Edgewater Coffee Company with friends from Epiphany Artists (we’ve been reborn!) to listen to Skean Dubh (“skeen doo”), a Scottish-American folk music band. LOVED IT. The music was invigorating! From the Irish bag pipes to the fiddle, from the acoustic guitar to Arabic drums and haunting vocals, the fusion sound was thrilling. You can hear some of their good work on My Space: Skean Dubh or Reverbnation: Skean Dubh. I enjoyed the ballads — the story-songs — like “Crazy Man Michael,” which is today’s “Daily Poem.”
Within the fire and out upon the sea
Crazy Man Michael was walking.
He met with a raven with eyes black as coals
and shortly they were a-talking:
“Your future, your future, I would tell to you,
your future, you often have asked me–
your true love will die by your own right hand
and Crazy Man Michael will cursed be”
Michael he ranted, and Michael he raved,
and beat at the four winds with his fists-oh!
He laughed and he cried, he shouted and he swore,
for his mad mind had trapped him with a kiss-oh!
“You speak with an evil, you speak with a hate,
you speak for the devil that haunts me–
for is she not the fairest in all the broad land?
Your sorceror’s words are to taunt me.”
He took out his dagger of fire and of steel
and struck down the raven through the heart-oh!
The bird fluttered long, and the sky it did spin,
and the cold earth did wonder and start-oh!
“Oh, where is the raven that I struck down dead,
that here’d lie on the ground-oh?
I see but my true love with a wound so red.”
Her lover’s heart, it did pound-oh!
Crazy Man Michael, he wanders and walks
and talks to the night and the day-oh!
But his eyes they are sane, and his speech it is clear,
and he longs to be far away-oh!
Michael, he whistles the simplest of tunes
and asks the wild woods their pardon
for his true love is flown into every flower grown
and he must be keeper of the garden …
Compare to an old medieval ballad: Lord Randall.
Magical.
THE POETRY PLACE 
Thank you Jane, very lovely to chance upon this.