jungfrukällan - the virgin spring

Sad to see the passing of Ingmar Bergman today. Most people remember his depiction of the Grim Reaper in The Seventh Seal but for me his best film is The Virgin Spring. It is a fable set in 14th century Sweden and explores themes such as innocence, jealousy, death and revenge.

I have an unfinished work that transplants the story into an Irish setting but retains the plot. It is in simple rhyming couplet form and I envisage it been like some of the Canterbury tales. I expect it wouldn't be half as good. The 89 minutes of the film would translate into a large poem and I have not had the creative or physical energy to pursue it but here it is, in unedited form, presented in remembrance of the departed Swede.


Cockcrow call the sun
And with the sunlight morning comes.
Let us look upon the hut
Where idle? Fi sparks the turf.
Eyes hooded dark and deeply felt
When with child she gives to vent.
"Anu, Danu, Don,
Anu, Danu, Don.
Mother of us all,
Mother of the soil.
Let this day break tender fruit
For you to drink of its juice.
Anu Danu Don,
Anu Danu Don."

Morning prayer on day that Saviour died
Welcome now a new and peaceful time.
Mother Mary mortifies her flesh.
As father does the chores before breakfast.
At wooden table seated now
With wooden bowls father, mother, Fi and Clow.
"Mother, does our child sleep late
Dreaming of dances as dance she did 'til late.
Go and awake her now so she may bring
The candles for the priest's blessing."
"I will awake her soon and to the church she will go
But 'til sweet dreams have passed and not before.
For tender is the night that softly lays
Unlike my ghostly visions that perturb my days."

Aisling, the maiden fresh as the spring fair
Still silent sleeps without world's care.
She'll go to mass late this morn
For the candles to be blessed by Father Tom.
Her mother pleads for her to rise
And the young girl does but at her ease.???
"Oh! mother dear, please may I wear my Sunday skirts
White stockings, blue shoes with pearls and the yellow shirt.
The skirts, the blue and the red
The fifteen maidens did weave with golden thread.
And finally to cover all
The darkest blue of my blue shawls."
"Now come! my child so sweet you must take care
Not to please so much the great seducers ear."

"When I was young I saw freedom would come
As a bird falls after flight to the sun.
Your comedy will soon begin", Clow says,
As he recalls wandering his young days.
Aisling now begins to mount
Fair Ban as Fi rides Dark Hunt.
From mother dear a final kiss goodbye
As father says "the Lord bless young life."
They leave the farm from wood it came
And back to wood they journey again.
Dark and fair through wood by lake they go,
Whistling in the trees these words sung by Clow.
"The winged bird will climb on high
And wander far in the spring time."


For more information ...
ingmar bergman
the virgin spring