Music from the Mound

AbstractIn the folk traditions of the British Isles, many musical tunes are said to have been learned from the fairies. The actual pieces vary in character, some being ordinary dance-music and others suggesting more fleeting, ethereal sounds. Although the title of “fairy tune” was sometimes used only to mark a piece's excellence, often it reflected an actual process of composition in which the musician was inspired by running water and other natural sounds. Players may have composed when they were in a meditative trance, for fairies are often associated with such altered states, and time itself takes strange shapes within the fairy hill. Mounds and ancient earthworks are shown as the places where fairy music was heard, reflecting older customs which sought gifts of healing and poetry through encounters with the dwellers in the hills. Traditions of fairy music thus embody archaic themes linking prophecy, poetry, music and the Underworld.