They will turn me in a your arms…

…to a newt or a snake. That was Fairport Convention. Tam Lin. Circa 1969. Originally Child Ballad 39A. The original was in Francis James Child’s collection of ballads complied in the late 19^th Century.

It’s a love song but, at the end, the story moves through a passage of demonisation, as the Faerie Queen realises Tam Lin, the earthly knight, might slip her clutches. Very gothic and elemental. Strangely resonant in Scotland today.

There he is, young Tam, a mysterious rake of a man from uncertain origins. He gets his Janet pregnant and she forces him to reveal he is a captive knight about to be the Faerie Queen’s human tribute to Hell. Only true love, well, true love, persistence and trust can save him.

So you might say, it’s just a fairy tale. One that rode the coat-tails of the long-haired folk revival of the sixties. What’s that about? Why bring it up now?

The point, for me, is that ending. Tam’s last chance to escape his thrall to the Fairy Queen, to be whole again, is to be rescued by the woman who carries his child.

To win his freedom, his true love, his only hope, must pull him from his horse as the faeries ride out at Halloween.

He warns her ‘they will turn me in your arms to a lion bold, or a naked knight… but cloak me in your mantle and keep me out of sight…’

And so it ever was, the powerful will do anything to keep hold of what they think is theirs by right. The Faerie Queen, with her magic, turns Tam into raving beasts and red hot metal (according to Child – see http://www.contemplator.com/child/variant39.html).

Centuries later, we find ourselves pursuing freedom of our own. Amongst today’s political drudgery and diatribe, we find the same thing. The powerful will stop at nothing to keep their hold over us. So we find demonisation coming thick and fast around our heads. They’ll do and say anything, tell any half-truth and wrap in a lie.

In the context of Referendum politics, I cast the No campaign in that role. They speak for the powerful in the same tones as the Fairy Queen, furious that any should dare to escape and any would dare to help. I get the feeling that behind the love-bombing, the ‘I love Scotland too’ rhetoric and all that, the undertone is ‘how very dare you?’

Hence the personal attacks. The constant conflation of trolling and cyber-crap that characterises the fringes of all sides becomes a one-sided failing of Yes The never-ending bizarre scares about everything come thick and fast . They may yet still tell us a Yes vote will turn us to reptiles or make us flounce away like overawed frogs into the peat-bogs where we belong.

There’s no substance to any of the arguments I’ve heard. They are few and scanty. Every one dissolves under scrutiny like the illusions they are. And after all the shape-shifting disguises they project on us they’ll try to strip us naked.

We need only stand firm. Alistair Darling is no Fairy Queen. He lacks the ferocity. Johann Lamont has already sold her pasty tithe to Hell along with duplicitous Murphy. Davidson, Dugdale and Alexander trumpet common cause as if such an alliance could outlast its period of expediency. Their hatchets are buried but still ready for business as usual when they expect it to resume. Cameron, Clegg and Osborne with the outrageous Farage lurk in the wings, mere amateur warlocks whose spells are worthless.

Stand firm. Say Yes to the only future left. Anything else is a fairy tale.