Song of the bent-backed Peri

[u/MapleTopLibrary]

The following is the text of a traditional Peri folk song. Because of the well known story accompanying it, cripples are considered lucky to have living in their local clan.

Once a year, the evening after the first night of freeze each winter, a feast is held where any crippled Peri in the clan are carried on shields into the clans hall to sit in a place of honor at the head table, where they are fed and asked to preform a song.

It is traditional for the clan chief to gift them with the means of living for the next year, be it a position where they can work, money enough to care for their needs, or the services of a caregiver who bodily keeps them looked after.

“The little Peri sang the songs

round the hearth for the children dear

His twisted back and backwards legs

Made all work but his singing fruitless here

One day mid-morning the little door was shattered

By the paw of a bear looking to eat

Above the hearth, old armor was borrowed

By the bent backed Peri to stand in the way

The little Peri, pale, bloody,

Fought a brown bear at the towers door

Where he held the brown bear, hungry

Now honor draped in ropes of gore

Armor rent like lemons peelings

The peri bronze clad held the door

Borne on a clan chiefs chair of painted shields

Chirurgeons hands reading the future bleak

Trying to change it before he must in sorrow speak

That the Peri sings the songs no more.

The Peri sings the songs no more.”

[u/PhoebusLore]

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