The Mermother

I wrote this story the same week I wrote "La Chevaliere" -- it's the only time in my life I've thought I was writing enough! My non-English-speaking then-mother-in-law was staying with us, and to avoid spending the whole evening smiling and nodding silently with her, I applied myself assiduously to paper.

The germ of the story started in a mutter -- "mermother, mermother." I wrote a lot of it, then couldn't figure out how the hades I was going to end it. I ended up opening my favorite source of sex, violence and macabre musical instruments, Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads and found a piece called "The Twa Sisters." (Pentangle does a pretty cool version of it.) Two sisters walk along the seashore, then the nasty older one pushes the adorable younger one in and saunters back home alone to scoop up the bereaved fiance. Two musicians find the drowned girl's body, think, "Hey, what a great harp she would make!" and wouldn't you know it, their next gig is the murderess' wedding!

And when they layed it on a stone,

The harp began to play alone...