“And when young Margaret’s waistline grew wider
The fruit of her amorous entwine inside her”

That’s such a good line! I found another site that said ‘centaur’ instead of ‘entwine,’ which I thought was funny.

“I may swoon from all this swelling” is another good one.

So the fawn (faun?) really is a guy – saved by this queen character, his cradle pulled from the reeds in yes another moses-type story. He was sick? He had cancer? He had been abandoned because of the war? And now he has fallen in love with a human woman, despite his (adopted) mother’s efforts – but he promises to come back to her afterwards, if she’ll only let him alone for the night – presumedly to be alone with Margaret, right?

I really like how ‘mar-ga-ret’ is three syllables throughout the song, instead of ‘mar-gret’.

So the faun’s mother is sort of the queen of the forest, some sort of nature demi-god, it sounds like. ‘the queen’s rebuke’ is a really neat little solo number for her. Powerful though she may be, she’s just another overbearing mother, ha ha.

Annan Water (the name of the river?) is actually sung by the faun, Margaret’s lover, I’m going to say – the captor and his captive have already found a way across the water, by the Queen’s power, and now the faun is stuck on the shore, unable to follow – and he’s saying that he doesn’t care if he drowns when he tries to come back. “my mother cries that if I try I sure will drowned be”

I wish that The Rake’s Song storyline fit in more – but it’d be for the worse if it hadn’t been included, so I’m glad it’s there, regardless.

And I think that at the end, the faun makes it to margaret’s boat – I don’t know what happened to her captor, but it’s just the two of them, sinking in the boat – so they’re together in the end.