The Old Grove of Veloria (Bardic Style)

“The Old Grove of Veloria” is an amalgam of many things that have stayed with me throughout my life: John Dowland, Robin Williamson, Pierre Bensusan, The Magic Garden, old ballads, bardic tales, and that peculiar place where music, memory and mythology begin to overlap. This version leans more heavily into the bardic side of the piece. Rather than treating the words as conventional song lyrics, much of it is delivered almost as a spoken narrative—as though the listener has come upon a wandering storyteller recounting an old tale whose origins have long since become uncertain. The accompaniment is therefore less about carrying a vocal melody and more about surrounding the words: appearing between phrases, commenting on them, and occasionally allowing the story to drift into music before the narrator continues. The imagery also owes something to the ancient tradition of treating trees as more than scenery—as witnesses, characters, symbols and keepers of memory. The Welsh tale often called “The Battle of the Trees” belongs to that world, and its strange bardic imagery has echoed through modern music as well; even Rush drew from the tradition. Veloria is not a retelling of that tale, but it inhabits some of the same imaginative country. The grove itself is deliberately difficult to explain. Its trees have names and personalities, yet they are not quite characters in the ordinary sense. They seem to know things the narrator does not, and perhaps to remember things that cannot—or should not—be spoken aloud. “Is it for joy?” I asked the leaves. “Or for what we have lost and cannot name?” The grove gave no answer, for some things, even trees will not say. For me, that is the center of Veloria. The bard tells the story, but the grove keeps its secret. Lyrics: In the old grove of Veloria, where light falls soft as kiss, there stood trees with names older than sorrow. There was Lady Threnwillow, whose branches wept in fair weather, and Ser Caledorn Oak, broad of heart and keeper of patient silence. Nearby grew the pale Aurelian Birch, whose bark caught the sun like whispered promises, and winding through them all, the soft-vined Melisthorn, forever reaching, never holding. I came to that grove as one summoned, though no voice had called. “Be fair to me,” I said—not to the sky, nor to the earth, but to the grove itself, for it listens in ways no person ever does, and answers in ways no person quite hears. The sun warmed the nettled air, and the wind stirred the long grasses into quiet confession, though what they told was never quite the same twice. Behind me, I felt a presence—yours, or something that had once been yours. Yet when I turned, only the trees stood, shifting gently as if hiding a truth, or hiding the hiding of it. Lady Threnwillow lowered her silver leaves, brushing my shoulder like a sorrow remembered, or remembered wrong, which is much the same. “You stand behind,” I whispered, “but are you near?” No answer came—only the faint tremble of branches that seemed to hold their breath. At the roots of Caledorn Oak, I found it: a small bouquet, bound in twine of Melisthorn vine. Simple. Deliberate. Unexplained— and so it seemed to say the most. Aurelian Birch shimmered faintly in the light, as though urging me to understand, but the meaning would not settle, and would not stay still long enough to be held. Was it love, offered in quiet? Or regret, wrapped gently so it would not wound too sharply? Or something else entirely— a feeling that had once been whole, but slipped like water through unclosed hands. Above, in the high reaches of the grove, the birds began their song. But here, beneath these ancient names, the song felt wrong. Not false—no, never false— but uncertain, like a joy that lost its footing, or a mourning that forgot its cause. Lady Threnwillow wept a little more. Melisthorn curled tighter around nothing at all, and held it fast. “Is it for joy?” I asked the leaves. “Or for what we have lost and cannot name?” The grove gave no answer, for some things, even trees will not say. So I remained beneath them. The wind moved through Veloria, carrying your name in fragments— not spoken, but suggested, like a memory that will not fade cleanly. My heart grew quiet, as though Caledorn Oak had taken it into his keeping. My eyes dimmed, as though Threnwillow had lent me her grief. And there, beneath the old and knowing trees, I lay down. Sleep came like moss over stone—soft, inevitable. And in that dreaming place, beyond root and branch, I saw you walking. Not alone.