The origin of the Rhiannon in this song is both pretty simple and pretty deep. Simply, Stevie Nicks read a novel on a long flight, and it included reference to a character named Rhiannon. She thought the name beautiful and set about writing a song using it, a song that she apparently completed in about ten minutes. She wrote it on her own, months before joining Fleetwood Mac.

She had no real idea that the Rhiannon in the novel was based on the Rhiannon in a world heritage set of stories written in Middle Welsh called The Mabinogion. They are the earliest known works of prose in British literature, and their complexity and character archetypes went on to influence J.R.R. Tolkein in his writing of the impenetrable Silmarillion.

Rhiannon in these tales is a goddess figure, a powerful childless queen archetype associated with swift horses. Daenerys Targaryen seems an apt successor.

There are very few pop radio lyrics that sliver into my brain, but even as a kid, I pondered some of these. The evocative similes used to describe Rhiannon deserve attention:

"Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night"

And oh man, I love this one especially:

"She is like a cat in the dark
And then she is the darkness"

Great language.

In the music, I don't know how someone ever was just walking around one day and daydreamed up such a combination of vocals, guitar part, and melodic bassline as in this song. It's all so engrossing. By the time of the long vocal harmonies, you are a prisoner.

The voice of Stevie Nicks, prime Stevie Nicks, is elemental. This is what rock stars are for, to make sure we all know that transcendence walks among us.

If my earlier post about "Reelin' In the Years" talked about the freedom-granting power of the major key in that song, "Rhiannon" does everything it can for the shrouding, closure-granting power of the minor key. Be the cat in the dark and then the darkness.