The Horse-Tamer's Daughter (filksong)

Filksong
Song Title:	The Horse-Tamer's Daughter
Composer:	Leslie Fish
Lyrics:	Leslie Fish
Melody:	original
Date:	1983
Subject:	Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover
Other:	audio cassette
External Links:
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From Fesarius #6, art by Hannah Shapero

From Fesarius #6, art by Hannah Shapero

From Fesarius #6, art by Hannah Shapero

The Horse-Tamer's Daughter is a 1983 filksong by Leslie Fish.

It was the title song of the printed filksong collection by the same name, The Horse-Tamer's Daughter, edited by Teri Lee and published by Off Centaur Publications in 1984.

The lyrics were also printed, along with art, in Fesarius #6 in 1984.

The lyrics are online here.

A Variety of Locales and Mediums

• The Horse-Tamer's Daughter, single filk
• The Horse-Tamer's Daughter, audio collection of Darkover filks
• The Horse-Tamer's Daughter, printed collection of Darkover filks
• the lyrics as printed in Fesarius #6, with art by Pyracantha, a fan in 2016 called it "really a fanfic in its own right."

This title page was not for a prose story but the lyrics to a song. "The Horse-Tamer's Daughter" was set on Darkover, in a remote area where one family worked with wild horses, capturing them and taming and training them. (The horses were introduced to Darkover by the human colonists.) The young lady has a psychic gift of working with animals especially horses, and this ability is amplified when she finds a lost magic talisman left in a ruined tower. Eventually she and a band of equines are able to drive off an invasion by a group of power-seeking wizards.

The song was very popular among Darkover fans and is probably still in some fan ("filk") singers' repertoire. I was commissioned to illustrate the lyrics in many pages so this is one of many. It was published in a fan magazine called "Fesarius" in 1984.

Black ink on illustration board, about 7 1/2" x 3", summer 1984

Listen

Julia Ecklar: here, fully orchestrated version (with sound effects!) (YouTube) and here (mp3 file).

Daniel Kelly: here (YouTube)

Awards

In 1999, it had been nominated for Best Hero Song; it also won a Ohio Valley Filk Fest Pegasus Award in 2002, in the category Best Song That Tells A Story

Description

The song is set on Marion Zimmer Bradley's world of Darkover, during the "Ages of Chaos" after the fall of Hali Tower where some of the psychic-sorcerer leroni were formerly trained. It is based on the novella "Tower of Horses", which is set in the world of the Darkover series created by Marion Zimmerman Bradley. This novella is published as part of a Darkover anthology “Music of Darkover” (Darkover Anthology Book 13).

The filk is from the point of view of a young woman who has a psychic link with horses; while playing near the ruined tower, she finds a "magic mirror" that enhances her range and power, much to her delight. This brings her to the attention of leroni from other Towers, who insist she must submit to them for training. She fights them, linking her mind with those of several horses, and using their combined strength to keep her freedom.

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Opinion

Unhappy Peasants

Marion Zimmer Bradley is rumoured to have disliked the song, because it claims that the peasants of Darkover were sometimes unhappy with the requirement to send all people with psychic gifts (laran) to a Tower for training. The leroni insist that an untrained telepath is a danger to self and others, and Bradley may have believed this was obvious to everyone. Although some highborn families would rather not send valuable heirs to the Towers (leroni don't marry), peasants would presumably all be happy with the raise in status and not mind the restrictions and disciplines required of Tower life.

Horses Don't Have Laran

MZB repudiated this song for two reasons. The first might be specious being that wild animals do not possess "laran" based on its origins and introduction into the population of Darkover. The second is based on the original lyrics in which the "wizard folk" proclaimed the horse tamers daughter a "living matrix" and created an eighth house, when based on Darkover canon she would have been adopted into House Hastur, who have as one of their presentations of laran the living matrix ability. Still a wonderful song.

Too Long

... [it] is infamous for going on… and on… and on… and… (Probably apocryphal) legend has it that when presented with the song, Marion Zimmer Bradley told Leslie Fish something along the lines of “That’s nice, dear, but isn’t it a bit long?

Yes, So LONG!

It has 15 verses and a chorus (which is usually only sung in a few spots, instead of after every verse); the version on the album is more than 13 minutes long.

David Weingart's 1994 filksong Filk Up Your Voices includes the lines:

But we're tired of lugging lyrics and we're tired of some songs And so we scream "Horsetamer's Daughter" is a hundred times too long.

A parody called "Like Comyn to the Slaughter," by Harold Feld, was included in Xenofilkia #16. It put the events of Horse Tamer's Daughter to the tune of Frank Hayes' "Like a Lamb to the Slaughter," a condensed talking-blues version of Mattie Groves, a tradition Scottish ballad. "Like Comyn..." mocks the length of the original by ending with the lines:

Be good; If you can't be good, be careful;

And if you can't be careful, try to keep it down to five or six verses.

A 2005 parody extension by Damien Sullivan:

The song goes on and on and on, always to the same tune,

I swear it's far more constant yet than the turning of the moon.

How many stanzas can she write to inflict upon our ear?

How many times can she find rhymes until we're out of here?

I won't continue my own song to torture you yet more,

I just wish that Leslie Fish would learn to stop at four.

alt:

I won't continue my own song until my voice is hoarse,

I just wish that Leslie Fish would get her own damn horse.

From a fan in 2023:

So, traditionally when singing Horsetamer, one is supposed to call and order a Pizza. (because it takes as long to sing as get delivery) ;-)

Parodies and Related Fanworks

• The Programmer's Daughter by Heather Stern
• Damien Sullivan wrote a parody extension of "The Horse-Tamer's Daughter"
• "Like Comyn to the Slaughter," by Harold Feld, was included in Xenofilkia #16

Fan Comments

Unknown Date

The tune is good but the original lyrics were ... unpopular. 22 verses and not quite canon attitude towards Darkover.

2005

I was introduced to filk back in college; my friend Sarah had a few tapes, "Minus Ten and Counting" and a couple of fantasy tapes. I wasn't clear on where she'd gotten them; "from a friend" or something like that. Certainly nothing one could buy easily. But I liked a bunch of the songs, and copied them -- the fantasy songs to one tape, and the space ones to blank space at the end of my Steeleye Span copies. I listened to them for a while, then kind of forgot about them over the years.

Then in 2001, in one of the poetry/story readings we Caltech emigres and friends had in San Fransico, Myfanwy sang "The Horse Tamer's Daughter", which enthralled and mystified me. It seemed in classic ballad style, but with more wizards than I usually find in actual folk songs, and the "moons" in the chorus was a mystery. But I'd completely forgotten about filk, and kept thinking of it as taking place in Spain or France or something.

So I went home, and googled the phrases I remembered, and found a copy of the lyrics, attributed to Leslie Fish. That name I recognized, and it all came back, and suddenly the song made more sense. "Oh! It's filk!" Also, it turned out that someone, Myfanwy's sister (who sang it to her over the phone) or whoever the sister got the song from or someone further down the chain, had modified a few key lyrics, presumably to make it make more sense to someone not versed with Darkover, because "Hastur" and "first-level screen" are pretty obscure if you haven't read the books, but pretty blatant otherwise. Once I knew it was supposed to be a Darkover song, some other things made sense too.

At any rate, I really liked the song, and ended up memorizing it, all 90 heptasyllabic lines. Which made me really aware of the roles of rhyme, rhythm, and meaning in being able to reconstruct a song or poem you've learned, and I went back to Tolkien and picked out what I call Galadriel's Lament, from The Fellowship of the Ring. "I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew; of wind I sang, a wind there came, and through the branches blew." This wasn't the first Tolkien I'd memorized; back in fourth grade, we'd been asked in class to memorize something to recite in front of the class, and I picked Gimli's chant in Moria, and never really lost it. My class didn't seem to appreciate it; in return all I remember of their stuff is that one thing ended with "Veto the mosquito!" I've also repeated tried to memorize the long Tom Bombadil songs from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil but never got far as a kid; it was just too random, plus too long-seeming. Though after memorizing "Horse Tamer's Daughter" perhaps I should try again.

2013

I actually quite like Horsetamer’s Daughter– maybe due to having encountered it at an impressionable age. But not being a Darkover reader, I listened to it for years before I made the connection to that series. I think it’s essentially musical fanfic set in Darkover rather than being tied to an extant story, though I’m open to correction. (And with Darkover, the line is pretty fuzzy in any case.)

2023

I don’t care if this is true to Darkover cannon or not....this just fires the imagination, it’s wonderful.

One of the best songs ever made, "When I send my silent call: wild horses come to me". Simply such profundity.