Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather
ShortStory 6,727 words Recommended by 11 award/anthology sources
"Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” (Roud 423, Child 313) is a traditional English folk ballad. Like many traditional songs, the lyrics are unattributed. Child transcribed twenty verses, and a twenty-first got added later (and is included here for some unknown reason—I keep writing to the Lyricsplainer mods to get someone to delete it or include it as a separate entry, but nobody responds, and all they’ve done is put brackets around it. Sometimes I hate this site.)"
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Quasar links out; the story lives on Uncanny, where the author gets the click.