From the Highlands to the deserts, from 1998 to the early 2030s — a world breaking, believing, and being remade.
The Ballad Dodecet is a twelve-volume cycle of interwoven lives — stories that stretch from 1998 to the early 2030s, the turbulent span modern historians have begun to call “the Fourth Turning,” and which Scripture might name “the time of the end.”
Written by Reverend Victor Robert Farrell — Poet and Poor Man’s Theologian — each ballad stands as fiction (or is it?), for the writer refuses to set down anything he has not lived, hopes to live, or expects yet to face.
These works form what he calls instructional fiction — stories that carry the timeless truths of what it means to be human in a fallen world, answerable to God and judged beneath the searching light of the 66 Books of the Holy Bible.
Each tale stands both in the shadow and in the light of that Word.
Callum James Roan was born where the mist meets the sea — son of a drowned fisherman, raised among salt and psalms.
Tall from the start, too tall for the decks that stole his father, he joined the Highland Regiment instead, where he learned that war has its own tides.
In the heat and dust of Iraq he met Forrest Van Roan, another soldier with a preacher’s heart and a name that felt like kin.
“Strange, isn’t it,” Forrest said, “how names circle back? Maybe you and me are branches off the same tree.”
“Aye,” Callum answered, “Roan or Rowan — we’re cut frae the same bloody wood.”
That moment bound them in legend — not brothers by blood, but by burden.
A man carved from sleet and psalms — red-haired, broad-shouldered, eyes like winter tide.
His voice carries the gravel of command and the ache of conscience.
He walks through blood, memory, and mercy — a living parable of redemption under fire. We believe that music is not just about listening, but also about sharing and connecting with others. Our platform allows users to create and share playlists with their friends and interact with other music enthusiasts. - The Ballad of Callum James Roan releases Easter 2027 under the Burning Lamp Books imprint, following The Ballad of Kentucky Johnson (Easter 2026).
Together they mark the unfolding of the Ballad Dodecet — twelve stories, one gospel, sung in many tongues of grace and grit.