How many miles to Abolan?
Three score and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, and back again.
If thy heels be fleet and light
You’Il be there by candle-light.
(Open the gates as wide as you may
And let the Rayin’s horses pass through on their way.)

In many Tellurian versions, the Holy City of Abolan appears as the somewhat-assonant Babylon (though in other versions it is Edinburgh or some other city). This use of the Wicked City is a rather ironic, since it obscures the whole point of the rhyme. In Aristasia Abolan was the capital of the old Western Empire (Abolrai), and the name is related to Avala, the Western paradise or Isles of the Blest. Abolan is a type of the Holy City, and as such, the Heart, Centre and Temple of the surrounding land. The Journey to Abolan is, therefore, maid’s spiritual pilgrimage to the true Centre. Three score and ten, of course, is not a number picked at random, but is a symbolic length in folk-tradition for a human life.

Many of the critical junctures of life occur at the multiples of seven years: the attainment of reason at seven, temple-entry in the East at fourteen, adulthood at twenty-one, the Grand Climacteric at 49 etc. 7×10 links human life to the historical cycle (symbolised by 10). The light of a candle is a traditional image of a single human life. Thus the road to Abolan is the spiritual journey of a maid’s earthly life; a life lived in thamë, whose every activity, however apparently ‘worldly’, is related to the Centre, and whose reward is a coming-to-the-Centre. It is not, however, a reward won lightly, for she must exercise skill and speed in order to attain the Goal.

This idea brings us to the final two lines. They are placed in brackets because they are used only when ‘Abolan’ is played as a game. The Rayin (queen) represents the human soul, and her horses are the various powers and tendencies of the soul which must be disciplined and harnessed in order to attain the Goal. Two players (they may or may not be children) choose the names of ‘opposites’ such as gold and silver, day and night, and then hold up their hands to form a gate. The other players form a ‘crocodile’ (the Rayin’s entourage) in front of the gate, and the rhyme is recited as an exchange between them and the gates. At the end the gates open and they pass through, but the gates come down in an attempt to trap the last player. This is the “perilous passage” motif so common in the fairy tales: the need to pass through all the dualities and oppositions of the world in order to attain the Absolute, the Oneness, which lies beyond them.

Abolan Game

The necessity of swiftness represents spiritual skill; if the player is too slow, she will be caught, and even if she succeeds her tail may be docked by the gates (often the soul is represented by a hare or a bird). The rest of the game reinforces the concept of the conflict of opposites which creates the flux of the material world and of the perilous passage: each child, as she is caught, must choose in whispers one of the two secret names, and, having chosen, lines up behind the gate to which it belongs. When all the players have been caught there is a tug-of-war between the two sides, and sometimes the losers must run the gauntlet between the winners, who attempt to whip their legs with long grasses or thin sally (willow) switches as they pass through.

See also
Nursery Rhymes: The inner meaning