Wow can that possum put away the Pad Thai, and Spaw does a pretty good job himself. Cap'n crunch??

I'll have a bit of earl grey and continue with that sone (which I wrote on the way back from the Grand Union on just such a night as is described in the ballad. Something like Rip Van Winkle and Thomas the Rhymer end up in northern New England.)

Young William rode across the fields to bonnie Ellen's farm
He sang a song to the bitter wind to keep his spirits warm
He met the folk upon the way, they thought him passing fair
They bade him join their company, nor could he deny them there.

They bore him on 'neath wheeling stars and unto a frozen vale
His voice did grow more fey and clear, his face more fair and pale
He sang and feasted among them all, forgetting his own hearth fire
And he's forgot his parents and fair Ellen, his heart's desire.

But when the morning it did come, he woke all on the road.
The folk, like frozen mist, were gone and once more he felt the cold.
And all the thoughts that had fled his mind returned with the morning sun
And swiftly o'er the frozen fields to Ellen's farm he did run.

But he has found no cozy home, nor eager lover there.
But frost as thick on the frozen beans, abandoned to nature's care.
For though it seemed but a single night all in that enchanted place,
Full twenty years had passed and gone as mortals count their days.

Winter moves across the land, a cold and a glorious king
The bitter wind his trumpeter makes oak and ash to sing.
A silent moon in a deep black sky, a single star beside
On such a night as this, my love, the winter folk do ride.