BEFORE THE DAWN

What's Before The Dawn?

Well... it's a song by Mike Whitaker. Or it was. Then, one day, while crashing on a friend's floor in Keele, he wrote another (on a mandolin in the wrong tuning), and a little while later a third, with a little help from a former work colleague.

And there it would have stayed.

Except that one day, back when WiGGLe pub meets were still crowded, someone brought along a pile of Zander's filk lyrics. Which included one with a note to the effect of 'thanks to Mike for the loan of the tower'. Mike read it, and realised it wasn't just the tower Zander had unwittingly borrowed, but the whole story... so he wrote a tune for it, and then he wrote another sequel (about half an hour before the filk concert at the '89 Eastercon). And those five songs made it onto Mike's first tape, The Oak The Rowan and the Wild Rose.

And there it would have stayed.

Except by then, Valerie, and Colin, and Phil, and Rhodri, and Vanessa, and heaven knows who else, had latched onto the story, contributing plot and characters in a disturbingly self-consistent way, almost as if the story already existed and was just waiting to be told. There was a handy plot guide, with new installments every month or so (called 'A4 The Dawn' - you may all groan now), and characters, none of whom have actual names, ranging from the Prince, the Captain and the Rumour-Monger all the way down to the Warlord's Daughter's Music-Teacher's Cat. Which latter fortunately snuck off for a nap in a patch of sunlight before anyone could write a song about it.

It's a part of British Filk history. And someday, we always said we'd tell the story.