The Coracle Knew the Way

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
On the River Teifi, in Cardiganshire, Wales,
John Davies, born 1819, shaped willow rods
with a curved knife, nicked from years of bending frames.
The coracle, oval and light, four feet long,
three feet wide, covered in tarred calico,
weighed only fifteen pounds on his back.
He carried it down at dawn, 5:30 AM,
mist rising at five degrees Celsius,
the brackish odor clinging to its frame.

[Chorus]
The coracle knew the way,
through winding currents and pebbled banks,
light as a leaf, strong as faith.
It danced on water, a bobbing ballet,
with nets of coarse hemp stretched between pairs,
salmon leaping in the chill.
John whispered to it, June 12, 1864,
in a letter to his brother,
choosing willow from the copse near the river.

[Verse 2]
In the damp workshop, cluttered with branches,
a pot of boiling tar bubbled over peat fire,
acrid bite mixing with earthy willow scent.
He trimmed rods, gripped the single paddle,
worn smooth, smelling of mud and tar.
At midday, a loaf of bara ceirch,
wrapped in cloth, beside smoked salmon's briny tang.
The coracle waited, upturned on the bank,
drying in late afternoon light, near 4:00 PM.

[Bridge]
What secrets did it hold, this craft of the river?
No records of the wives weaving covers,
or children gathering tools, just hints in censuses.
Superstitions unnamed, launches unspoken,
pre-Roman echoes in its curve.
Yet it navigated rapids in the 1872 regatta,
Cardigan Observer noting the skill.

[Verse 3]
John, at forty-five, pushed off into the mist,
fingers on slick tarred calico, icy water lapping.
The coracle carried him, faithful as the Teifi's flow,
through mass emergences of mayflies, not bugs,
but whispers of the water's path.
In 1892, he passed, but the boat remembered,
lightweight vessel of forgotten dances.

[Outro]
The coracle knew the way.