Red-Haired Daughters

There’s an old Indonesian saying about not letting your red-haired daughter get too close to the mountain, or the Volcano God will take her.

Okay, it’s not exactly an every-day household saying, but apparently, it’s there. A long while back, possibly around 2020, I mentioned a fascinating book I read called When They Severed Earth From Sky by Elizabeth and Paul Barber, a study of myth within geography, or how the land records the mythology of a place as much as the people do. So if you know me, yeah, you get how much I loved that.

Around the same time, our songwriter’s group, The Small But Mighty Songwriters, did a songwriting prompt. My good friend Susan Stamnes managed the prompt by picking sentence fragments from the newspaper that she thought were compelling or interesting, and then drawing them out of a hat for each person. I got “consumed by lava and fire.” Uffda. But at the same time, totally me.

I remembered the thing in the book about red-haired daughters, and decided to do a retelling of the myth. I played the first draft for Michael, and he said, “That ending is not going to be Susan-approved.” I had to agree, so I took another swing at it, and felt a lot better about the result. And indeed, it was Susan-approved.

I was the wise woman’s red-haired daughter
I had the run of my whole world
No mortal man would dare harm a single hair
Of the wise woman’s red haired girl

I went out walking down by the water
Gathering herbs for healing and rites
I saw him standing tall by the water fall
And I felt my heart and my temperature rise

His eyes, so beguiling
His words chosen to ensnare
He led me like a child up the mountain side
And did what no mortal man dared

I cried out in anguish, I tried to fight him
I felt the mountain rumble its ire
An explosion tore the sky and smoke billowed high
And I was consumed by lava and fire

When I came to my senses I thought I’d been dreaming
But he spoke to me, his true face unmasked
You were born for me, my eternal wife to be
And the mountain shook with the volcano god’s laugh

But I had a secret
A spell up my sleeve
Baptised by blood and fire, I spoke my words of power
Now I’m free but I can never leave

That’s the story of my true power
No longer the volcano god’s red-haired wife
My red hair fountains from the top of the mountain
And the mountain has a Goddess of New Life

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