I once asked Coyote if he preferred to speak the language of beasts, Gods, or men. He replied,
“I don’t speak like any of them. They all speak like me.”
Which, like many of his answers, was quite unhelpful, and that was probably on purpose.
Sometimes his howl is nothing you could transcribe; sometimes he speaks it. The closest equivalent I have in English is the difference between laughing, and saying “Hah!” It’s partly a real laugh, and partly a spoken word. I asked him once what he meant when he said, “Aooo,” and he replied that the nearest translation was, “So mote it be.”
I asked him a third question: “Is that a real answer, or is it a trick?”
He said,
“If it does the trick, then it’s real.”
So mote it be.
____________
Tonight, Coyote drinks the wine
Of his own slit throat
And shuffles off to the Faerie court
In his ragged overcoat.
And when Titania turns him down
And bids him gone from here
He smiles a secret smile
And he sheds no tear;
“Aoooo”.
How gay the Faerie masquerade!
How gay the Faerie court!
How gay the Faerie at his ease
And making raucous sport!
Coyote fits in here as well
As antlers on a bull
He steals a jug of Faerie gin,
And eats till he’s well-full,
“Aoooo”.
Titania’s consort laughs at his ragged grey muzzle;
Dances ’round Coyote like a child with a puzzle.
Titania’s consort mocks
The ugly old beast:
One’s the fairest thing on Earth,
The other is the least, the least—
The older of the Gentry
Almost look alarmed
To have a guest among them
Who cannot quite be charmed.
The younger ones, in contrast
Must think him quite the mark!
See Titania’s consort
Circle ’round him like a shark.
“Come with me,” Coyote says,
“Come walk with me a ways
Sister Moon does love me
And she’ll bathe us with her rays.”
“Never me!” Titania says,
Her bearing sharp and proud
She barely flicks her eyes;
Her consort laughs aloud,
“Aoooo”.
How gay the Faierie masquerade!
How gay the Faerie ball!
How stately Queen Titania
Presiding over all!
But for all her beauty
And for all her power
Her consort with Coyote lies
Within her very bower!
Aoooo!
Aoooo!
Aoooo!
_____________
I tell a lot of tales of Coyote, and not a few tales of the Fae. I’ve only combined the two once, and it’s here.
