Kingdom Come

[Bowerthane]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOMR_M_mgsU
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mh0di7Dh7A
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dRSle6S40k

Kingdom Come
by
The Civil Wars

Run, run, run away
Iern, iern, iern áweġe
Buy yourself another day
Byge þé oþre dæġe
 A cold wind’s whispering secrets in your ear
Án ceald wind hwispraþ rúna on þín éaran
 So low only you can hear
Swá rówe þú áne híere
 Run, run, run and hide
Iern, iern, iern and hýde
 Somewhere no one else can find
Stówe nánu elles finde
 Tall trees bend and lean pointing where to go
Langu tréowu búgaþ and hlinaþ wissiende hwǽre ġegán.
Where you will still be all alone
Hwǽre þú ġiet béo ealles áne


 Don’t you fret, my dear
Ne fyrhte þú, mín léof
 It’ll all be over soon
Éall him oferfǽrþ snúde
I’ll be waiting here for you
Hér wille iċ abídan for þé

Run fast as you can
Iern swá snele swá þú mæġ
 No one has to understand
Nánu þearf tó understandanne
Fly high across the sky from here to kingdom come
Flíeh héah ofer þæm heofone heonon tó cynedómcóme
 Fall back down to where you’re from
Eftfiel þé fram-cynne
 Don’t you fret, my dear
Ne fyrhte þú, mín léof
 I’ll be waiting here for you
Hér wille iċ bídan þé
For you, for you
For þé, for þé

Don’t you fret, my dear
Ne fyrhte þú, mín léof
 ( Don’t you fret, my dear)
( Ne fyrhte þú, mín léof)
 It’ll all be over soon
Eall him oferfǽrþ snúde
 ( It’ll all be over soon)
( Eal him oferfǽrþ snúde)
I’ll be waiting here
Hér wille iċ bídan
Don’t you fret, my dear
Ne fyrhte þú, mín léof
 It’ll all be over soon
Eal him oferfǽrþ snúde
 I’ll be waiting here for you
Hér wille iċ bídan þé
 For you, For you
For þé, for þé
Run, Run, Run away
Iern, iern, iern áweġe
Run, Run, Run away
Iern, iern, iern áweġe

Written by Joy Williams and John Paul White.  Who were The Civil Wars but, sadly, seem to have split up now.



This is the second of two songs I liked the sound of when they popped up over the end credits to the original Hunger Games film. Hopefully ġesíþas will also enjoy it for the pathos of its delivery, too.

However the lyric proved to have an eerie resonance with that kiddies’ book I am still, slowly but crawly, pegging away at. Many of my child characters are left foundlings, fatherless etc. by the Viking Wars, whose harryings some only survive by the speed of their feet. Or could not open their eyes for four days after seeing what the Vikings did to her parents.  Or woke up in the smouldering remains of his village thinking the slave traders were nice men, come to rescue him.

At any rate that’s how I’m hoping I’ve built up some emotional and social realism ready for when they come Lady Ethelflæda’s way. Such as the slave-boy who got sucked in by mistake, never dared own up and grew up to become thane-in-command of her hearthtroop. For at her court school they get an education and patronage from the best mother-in-lore ever, and therefore a far better chance in life.

In the second half of the book, when as adults they have all made good as thanes, reeves, warriors, a moneyer, bard, leech, Abbess of Much Wenlock etc. they become Lady Ethelflæda’s hard-core loyalists on whom she relies to see to the Reconquest of the Danelaw. For as we know, this put King Edward the Elder in a position to lay the foundations of the present Kingdom of England, largely by his administrative shake-up of AD 921 and by bringing King Alfred’s shrieval system north of the Thames. Thanks to this song, ‘Kingdom Come’ is still my working title for the final chapter and, since my creative juices are telling me I’d have a better idea by now if I was going to have one, it looks set to be the finished title. For the kingdom that these waifs and strays work, fight and pray to found, and live to see coming, is England.

O what a weird wyrd we weave who a story do conceive...



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The moral right of the author to be identified as a water-cooler sensation has been asserted.