Rise - The Waters and The Wild 15X38 Pastel and pencil on paper
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Bats seem to live between worlds - earth and sky, night and day, natural and supernatural. This has put them at the forefront of folklore, myth, and magic all around the world.
It is not just their physical form that makes bats a curiosity. The way they live their lives and their behaviour places them somewhere betwixt and between, appearing as neither one thing, nor the other. They often live and breed in dark and unusual places such as caves, tunnels and lofts, leaving these at twilight – the time between light and darkness – in search of food. Appearing as half bird, half mammal at the edge of day and night they are seen as liminal beings and not part of the natural order. This liminality gives bats a supernatural air that further heightens mystery and distrust as they cross the borders between birds and mammals, day and night. The inspiration for this drawing was an article in the New York Times reporting that Thoor Ballylee, the tower once owned by the poet William Butler Yeats, is home to roost of threatened Lesser Horseshoe bats. The bats are valued and protected.
Yeats is known for his deep knowledge of Irish mythology, and he wrote many poems about the Sídhe, or Irish fairies. Fairies, like bats, are liminal beings. They are most often spotted when they emerge their hills at dusk to steal choice fruit from orchards and dance. This drawing uses Yeat's famous poem The Stolen Child to compare bats to the Sídhe. The poem is a song, or chant, in which the fairies call to a human child to come join them, forever. |
This work is one of three based on the harmony and melody in Eddie Vedder's song Rise. It contains some of Vedder's lyrics, along with excerpts from Yeat's poem The Stolen Child.
Lyrics to Rise |
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The Stolen Child
W. B. Yeats - 1865-1939
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.
Credit to Zteve Evans - https://folklorethursday.com/folktales/bats-in-mythology-and-folklore-around-the-world/