Sometimes I get a tune stuck in my head — an earworm, as it’s called. I find the best way to deal with it is to filk it. So when Warren Zevon’s Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner wouldn’t go away, it’s what I did. This is in honour of the Queen at the time, the lovely and slightly worrying Yolande Kesteven.
[May 2006]
Yolande was a Laurel from the Barony Number One,
With her red pen at the ready, correcting to be done.
The crown was won in Rowany on a hot and sweaty day
Now they’ve set out for the Crossroads to lead the passion play.
The eastern isles and southern were bent and bound for war
With their sabres all a-rattle, guarding the shore.
The bandits in the meanwhile were watching all with glee
They planned to take the kingdom and to wipe out the royalty.
Yolande the Queen of Lochac
Yolande the Queen of Lochac
Her subjects thus divided by fear and disrespect,
She had no standing army her kingdom to protect
So the Ypotryll was drafted to raise a mighty band
The children of all of Lochac fighting for the land.
Yolande the children’s Queen of Lochac
[Time, time, time for a better kind of war]
The kingdom’s grandest Dame
[The guard stand fast for Yolande, till they need to stand no more]
You could all hear her army marching, singing as they came
With their banners raised, and shouting Yolande’s name
With their banners raised, and shouting Yolande’s name
Yolande searched the Crossroads for the men who’d steal her throne
She found them on a Sunday, in a fortress built of stone
Disguised as knights and camouflaged, they didn’t fool her guard
And they blew those blasted bandits from there to Innilgard!
Yolande the children’s Queen of Lochac
Yolande the children’s Queen of Lochac
Yolande the children’s Queen of Lochac, talking about the Queen
Yolande the children’s Queen of Lochac
The eternal Queen of Lochac will never quite depart
(No matter what the rules say) from every child’s heart
In Mordenvale, in Ynys Fawr, in Southron Gaard and Stormhold,
The name of Queen can only mean the short but mighty Dame named Yolande.