Calling Home Myth in Ysireth | World Anvil

Calling Home

Calling Home is an obscure children's song, originally written in High Aeldvaren. It originated on Harokin several milennia before the Shattering, and only chance led it to not be lost when Harokin was. (A few small families with young children moved continents, preserving the song.)   The song itself is a simple rhyme that has gone through iterations of minor changes, presumably losing its original meaning. [Author's Note: this song, of course, definitely doesn't have anything to do with the events leading up to the Shattering.] The oldest known version goes like this (rough translation):  
Look up, look up, look up, look up
See them swimming swimming swimming
Look up, look up, look up, look up
Hear them singing singing singing   Spirits rise, spirits fall
Calling home home home
One day soon, we'll be all
Coming home home home   Look up, look up, look up, look up
See them swimming swimming swimming
Look up, look up, look up, look up
Hear them singing singing singing   Past the spirits, standing tall
Coming home home home
God Herself is gonna fall
Coming home home home
Calling home home home
Coming home home home
  As with most children's songs, this one has an associated 'game' or 'dance' with it.   During the 'chorus' (first and third stanzas), all the children stare directly upwards and spin in place or hold hands and run in a circle together. Any child who falls during this stage must make very silly or very awful noises during the 'singing singing singing' line, trying to drown out the other children. After the stanza ends, they can stand up again and rejoin the other children for the first or second verse.   During the verses (second and fourth stanzas), pantomime is used (or freeform interpretive dance). The first verse is primarily broken into certain movements per line:
  • "spirits rise, spirits fall" - waggling fingers and lifting/lowering hands, usually with exaggerated wiggly movements of the entire arm or even body
  • "calling home home home" - a scooping motion with both arms or gesturing/waving as though beckoning a friend to join them
  • "one day soon, we'll be all" - usually involves reaching out and grabbing each other's hands, either in a large circle again or in smaller unplanned pairs
  • "coming home home home" - most often more spinning or twirling with one's handmates
  •   The second verse is considerably more diverse in its possible interpretations of movements; the first verse is fairly consistent across groups of children, but the second seems almost random, depending on how the children singing interpret the lyrics. "Past the spirits" often results in pointing upwards, "standing tall" can be a pantomime of a kinvar standing with puffed-out chest and hands-on-hips, and "calling/coming home" can be similar to the movements performed in the first verse.   "God Herself is gonna fall" is usually one child melodramatically collapsing into another child (or into the interlinked hands/arms of two other children), and the vast majority of arguments and hurt feelings arise from this line alone - either children don't agree on who gets to fall as "God Herself" or someone is dropped, elbowed, or otherwise bruised in the act of falling (or being fallen upon).   The final repetition of "calling/coming home", if the song is not disrupted by hurt feelings before then, seems to usually repeat until all children have fallen dizzy on the ground after spinning in place or running in circles with each other.


    Cover image: by Ty Barbary via Midjourney

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