Скачать или смотреть The Legend of Blood and Slaughter - Poem by James F Spiva

📖 The Legend of Blood and Slaughter – by James F. Spiva

This isn’t just poetry — it’s history wrapped in verse. My dad, James F. Spiva, has a way of bringing the Appalachian mountains to life through his words, weaving together folklore, memory, and truth.

The Legend of Blood and Slaughter recalls the stories surrounding Wolf Creek, Lake Trahlyta, and the battles once fought between the Creeks and Cherokees. It speaks of the Nunnehi, the Immortal Ones of Cherokee legend, who guided the lost and comforted the weary. With imagery both haunting and beautiful, Dad captures the way history lingers in the land and in our imagination.

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Below is the poem in full so you can read along as you listen:

✍️ Full Poem

The Legend of Blood and Slaughter
By: James F. Spiva

Shrouded in the foggy mists of legend
Where Wolf Creek’s crystal waters spring and flow
Stand two mountains all abreast like brothers
And Lake Trahlyta in the glade below

Where The Nunnehi, Immortal Ones, the Searchers
“The People Who Live Anywhere” of old
Are recalled around Appalachian campfires
And wistfully their exploits are retold

How they await the soughing sound of wind song
That comes like a hounded rabbit to the warren
The plaintive cries as evening falls and the night calls
To the lost and the lonely and forlorn

Hunters lost and brave, yet in the twilight
Ghostly cries of poltergeists they hear
Struggling phantoms dying in the midnight
‘Til the Nunnehi are wont to interfere

And lead them safely home again come morning
O’er steep and rugged mountain trails and green
Through the gap at the brother mountains’ shoulders
Through laurels to the meadows down between

Legends tell how warring Creeks and Cherokees
Once fought a fierce, heroic battle there
Now spirits of the dead unleash their memories
When oaks and hickories of their leaves are bare

The battle rages on in dreams and nightmares
The Creeks hope to reclaim their sacred hills
And the Cherokees defend their highland passage
‘Til each again the other’s life blood spills

The streams ran red with blood of the dead and dying
Flowing down the contoured mountain sides
To empty all their woes in Lake Trahlyta
And spread with red the legend on her tide

Now the song of the Nunnehi, the searchers
Is sung with sorrow, woe and flowing tear
A song about the mountains, Blood and Slaughter
The woeful names the brothers now must bear

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