o syster gheeldyn
dark of the river
Popular children’s Hallowtide song ‘Gather Round Ye Children’ (gather round ye children / come to hear of Gheeldyn / haunting the river / hungry for your sins) is believed to derive from an older, Victorian-era ballad ‘O Syster Gheeldyn’ that presents an anomalously sympathetic portrait of the fabled terrifying revenant.
The ballad is narrated by her sister, whom Gheeldyn has come to live with; in this telling, Gheeldyn is seduced and impregnated by a local married town leader, then blamed by the townsfolk for a church fire and accused of collusion with the Devil. Her house is burned in recompense, and she runs aflame to the river, where she drowns.
Some early 19th c. scholars believe the ballad may be in reference to a historical personage Gwendolyn C— (last name undecipherable in church records) who came to Hallowtide in 1793 and died in a housefire in 1801. A contemporary letter mentions a ‘Gwendyn’ who ‘perished by drowning’ in the same year.1
The ballad was later converted to the cautionary children’s song that is still sung to this day.
A local occultist group in the late 1960s, primarily young women, revived the original version of the ballad and revered Gheeldyn as a central figure of their pagan pantheon. They were said to invoke the unborn child of Gheeldyn and the Devil, spawned of fire and water, whom they claimed would roam the shadowy streets of Hallowtide, enacting his mother’s revenge.
The group met at an abandoned mansion, which was raided by police under suspicion of drug use and animal sacrifice. The women fled, and none were apprehended. Among the candles, bones, feathers, vials, various teeth of human and animal origin, and occultist literature collected as evidence at the site, a rough cassette recording was found of the ballad ‘O Syster Gheeldyn’:
oh syster Gheeldyn never should have come oh syster Gheeldyn what have they done dark of the river deep and black the water dark of the river you came in the springtime bonny dress of yellow he came a'courting another woman's fellow dark of the river deep and black the water townsfolk do whisper the devil with your name red leaves of autumn belly round with child town church is burning they blame you for the fire dark of the river deep and black the water torches do glitter on the night they came harlot o harlot you infect our town seduction and witchcraft 'tis time you're gone dark of the river deep and black the water dark of the river syster all aflame dark of the river slip inside the current dark of the river she will come again
Other scholars disagree with these purported origins of the ‘Gheeldyn’ mythos, arguing that instead she has much older roots, whether La Llorona of Hispanic American folklore or Oizys, the obscure Greek goddess of misery and woe.
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