The Truth About Elden Ring's Singing Bats Revealed

There are plenty of reasons why "Elden Ring" is so appealing to so many people. For some, it's the difficulty that keeps them coming back. For others, it's the sheer amount of content that FromSoftware has packed into the game. But for virtually everyone, the Lands Between is the selling point. Despite existing within an expansive open-world genre with tons of formidable competition on the gaming market, the open world in "Elden Ring" truly feels otherworldly due to its gorgeous design, size, and the beings that occupy it.

One such being is the Chanting Winged Dame. Often considered one of the more tragic details featured within "Elden Ring," the Chanting Winged Dame — more commonly known as the singing bats — sings a song before engaging in battle with the player. The song sounds somber and was initially believed to be in Latin, a dead language from which virtually all modern languages were spawned. On Reddit, one player seemed to have deciphered and translated these lyrics, and judging by their interpretation, the song is a rather sad tale regarding the degradation of the Lands Between. However, recent discoveries have uncovered the real truth about the haunting vocalizations of the singing bats, and it might be surprising. 

In the aforementioned Reddit post in which "Elden Ring" players painstakingly attempted to translate the seemingly Latin lyrics into English, several bits of trial and error could be found until the user came up with what they thought was a good bet. The lyrics speak about the singing bats being destined for motherhood, but becoming distraught at the current state of the land in which they live. This translation added some context to the bats' story, so players began attempting to parse out other lyrics heard in the soundtrack. However, they were shocked to find that the other tunes mean nothing at all.

Reddit user Magister Organi — one of the users who originally translated the singing bats' lyrics — published his findings, sharing that most of the Latin used in the game isn't actually Latin at all and is instead meaningless gibberish that was computer generated. Organi further expanded on these findings in a Reddit post in which he received confirmation from Latin speakers and music composers who worked on "Elden Ring" that the lyrics didn't actually mean anything and were instead used to create an in-game atmosphere.

So yeah, the singing bats aren't actually singing about anything of substance. However, it doesn't take away from the fact that the game is arguably one of the best in recent memory and has cultivated a massive fanbase that spans well beyond the scope of the traditional "Souls" series.