Concept and original poem: HRM Kristofer Kensor
Music and lyric adaptation: Conn MacNeill
The fire of our camp was not warm that night,
So I strode to the field where so many had died,
The grass was still wet with the heart-sap of kinsmen,
When I heard someone call to me from the hilltop beyond.
Brandishing steel, I went swift apace,
The voice called again, for it knew well my name,
I cast down my blade, running deer-swift to meet it,
Thought-storm of great fury raged, my mind not my own.
The hilltop achieved, I gazed wild-eyed about,
For I thought I’d reached hell or the edge of the world,
The voice now was gone, there was deafening silence,
The death-song that rang in my ears, for two days was gone.
I fell to the dew-bed to rest for awhile,
'Till breath had returned, and I’d strength to rise,
I prayed to the moon to my fraught soul illumine,
I gazed deeply into her eye, but she showed me no rune.
I sought then an answer from the valley below,
And looked on the gray cloak of fog o'er the land,
The silence was broken by wolf screams and howlings,
They echoed across the moor, then silence returned.
I found all the wisdom I needed for life,
And the courage to face death and not turn away,
I found there the warmth that the red fire was lacking,
I found the contentment the moon never gave,
'Twas the wolves that had called to me,
They alone know my name.