Over on WetCanvas in the Fantasy/SciFi forum, there was a challenge for the month of January. The theme of the challenge was to create something, in any medium, that had to do with a song.

Mine is from a Canadian singer, Loreena McKennit. She wrote and sang a song called “The Bonny Swans”. Loreena McKennit has such a beautiful voice!

The video is a bit long but the gist of it is that a girl is drowned in the river by her jealous sister. Her sister wants to marry the girl’s love. The body is swept around where the swans swim and eventually is laid out by a miller who thinks it’s a swan. A harpist comes sees the body and makes a harp of it. He is invited to the sister’s wedding to the girl’s love. At the wedding the harp sings the story and tells everyone what the sister did to her.

I’ve been looking at tapestries and have been on a medieval binge so I did this, in a naive medieval style in material ~ embroidery floss and linen. I did a quick sketch on paper and then pretty much free styled this as I went along.

It shows the sister in her wedding dress as the ghost comes out of the harp to tell of her murder and a swan is attacking the sister as well.

The swan cracked me up, it’s a silly thing.

Please ignore the fuzz by the swan, I didn’t realize it was there till after I took the photo. (and can I say how much I loathe how long it takes and the manner in which Windows 10 downloads photos)

This is on a 12 inch hoop.

©Virginia Spencer, thepurpledogpaintingblog.com, 2018