The Fern Law of Faery

ORFEO

2012-01-29T17:50:00.000Z

The Thracian story of Orpheus and Eurydice was known in medieval Britain via the version in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. But there were a number of native tales, ranging from written lays such as Sir Orfeo (13th century), folk tales, and ballads including one in dialect from the Shetland Isles. What follows is my own distillation of these native sources.

Orfeo was a harper of renown. One day while he was practising his harp, his wife Heurodis went into the orchard with her two young children to enjoy the fine weather and view the flowers of May. As the children played she lay down under a tree and soon fell into a slumber. Suddenly the children heard her screaming and tearing at her clothes. They couldn’t get her to pay them any attention and so ran for help. Orfeo came only to see her fade before his eyes and disappear. Pointing to the tree the children said she had lain under, Orfeo realised it was an ympe tree, grafted with another strain, liable to enchantment by the faërie folk. In those days harping was one of the magic arts so he played a tune of discovery and awaited the expected response. In answer a voice sang softly through the trees:

The King of Faery with his dart
Has pierced your lady through the heart

She had been spirited away to the Otherworld. Orfeo was stricken with grief. He left his children with their grandparents and went off to become a wandering minstrel, seeking in every place where there might be a way into the faërie realm. He lived like this for ten years, sometimes gaining accommodation where he was engaged to play, at other times sleeping in the woods and wild places. His beard grew long and his body lean. His only solace was his harp.
One day while sitting on a mossy stump, about to pluck the strings of his harp, he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. He watched carefully and listened through his harp strings until a sight he had sought for ten years came into focus. He knew that if he moved or looked too directly he would see nothing. So he sat stone-still and watched with a sideways look through the harp strings as the faërie company moved through the trees.
Then he saw something that nearly spoiled his resolve to watch in this careful way. Heurodis was among them! She glided softly with the others as if no feet touched the ground, and yet they trod the ground as any man or woman would. As they passed he looked at Heurodis wistfully and she returned his look with the barest flicker of recognition. But it was enough. When they had passed he followed and saw them disappear into the roots of a great oak tree.
He approached the tree but could find no way in. So he played a spell of opening and saw, clearly before him, a way leading off at an angle that had to be viewed with the same sideways look - as if not looking at all - that he had used to watch the faërie company. Doing this, and touching the harp strings all the way, he followed the dim passage, fearing that if he lost the view of the passage he would be buried underground. Eventually he came through to a forested plain with a castle standing upon a hill in the near distance.
So he went there and knocked at the gate. The porter came and asked what he wanted. So he played him a tune of welcoming. He was taken to a hall in which there were many ympe trees, each with a woman slumbering beneath them. Under one such tree he saw Heurodis. But he made no sign and she appeared as if she were not present in her slumbering body. He was brought before the King who said
‘Who art thou? I never sent for thee’.
Orfeo replied
‘I am a poor minstrel’
and he began to play. The tune he played came from dexterous fingers, but also from his heart and his soul and his craft as he filled the hall with enchantment. Everyone fell silent and listened to the music he played. Notes fell from the strings like flakes of gold and shimmered around the hall like the light of the Moon on the quivering surface of a lake.
When he had finished there was silence for a good while as the notes echoed in the inner ears of the listeners. Then the King said
‘Such music must be rewarded, ask and you shall have your wish’.
‘That lady there under the ympe tree’, said Orfeo, pointing at Heurodis.
‘Nay’ said the King, ‘She is a fine lady and you are rough and unworthy. It would be loathsome to see you together’.
‘It would be loathsome for you to break your word’, said Orfeo.
‘Take her then’, said the King.
So he brought her back to her home and her children and they began a new life together and put that sadness into the past and left it behind them and never looked back or remembered it.

-*-
There is no hint in the British versions of the tragic Greek ending in which Orpheus is told he must not look back as Eurydice follows him from Hades. He cannot resist making sure she is behind him, and looks, only to lose her forever as she slips back into the darkness. I have, nevertheless, hinted at this indirectly.

The Enchanted Stick

2012-01-21T18:13:00.003Z

Here is a Maori tale from New Zealand:

In a certain part of the forest there are beings that have always inhabited it and remain there still, though they are rarely seen. Those that live in the forest and who are familiar with its secrets can sometimes hear them singing at night. There is a special fruit that they eat and if humans go to gather some of that fruit invocations must be made and permission granted to collect it.
If a stranger comes into this part of the forest from another area and does not acknowledge them they are displeased. Once a hunter followed a wild pig into the part of the forest where they live and tracked the pig to an open glade where he killed it. But when he tried to leave the forest he could not find his way and then found himself back in the glade where he had killed the pig. He tried again, but was soon lost until, at nightfall,there he was again in the same glade. So he had to spend a frightening night in the forest and although he slept for a little his dreams were troubled.
As dawn broke he saw a shapely stick on the ground and reached out to pick it up. As he grasped it, it moved and began pulling him along through the trees so that he had to leave the pig behind. 'An offering to the spirits of this place', he found himself thinking.Eventually he came to a track he knew in another part of the forest. The stick disappeared. When he began to make his way home he heard a wavering and plaintive voice calling after him, saying
'Go, and do not come again'.

(Collected in the Nineteenth Century)

Unseen Presences

2012-01-16T17:34:00.002Z

I readily believe that there are more invisible than visible elements in the universe of things. But who will explain the families to which these elements belong, their grades and the relationships between them and their individual features and qualities? What do they do? What are the places they inhabit?

from the Latin of Thomas Burnet’s Archaeologiae philosophicae (1692)

Otherworld Journey

2012-01-09T00:16:00.000Z

Sitting by this pond, I looked at the trees reflected on the surface and also at the green of the pondweed. Where would looking at these things - in the enclosing atmosphere of this forest - take me?

I saw a mossy turf before me and walked across it as if floating on air. A path wound down through trees to the bank of a river. The water in the river seemed to be flying rather than flowing and rushing onwards between two great rocks. I cast away my fear and flew on the water stream through the gap and out onto a wide plain which both had trees on it and yet was wide and open at the same time. Mountains in the distance soon came close. Everything, however far, could as soon become close. Everything close-by may take days to journey to. Or not.

What did I want from this place? It was important to know to avoid being lost here forever. But the will could not be imposed here so much as merged with the will of the place itself to gain desired effects which must be in accordance with the will of the place. It was a technique that had to be learned. Navigating here requires a strong will, but not the desire to dominate.

It is important to know, too, when to ask for help and how to ask for it. Who is this on the road before me? I don’t know. I look beyond and the figure fades. And another? She is familiar, though I cannot place her, and she comes bearing a token I recognise. I take her hand and we walk together through starlight. She brings me to my destination and hands me the token, which is our secret.

Then she is gone and I am alone again before a mossy bower bejewelled with dew in the starlight. This is where I will sleep tonight and awake with the dawn and the knowledge I seek. There will be dreams that are not always pleasant. Things to confront that will challenge my fear. But I have the token.

The next morning I walk out of the bower into the dawn carrying my token and a way opens before me. The bare trees reflected in the water shimmer as if in a light breeze, yet there is no breeze. The mossy sward gives way to pondweed on still water. It may have been no more than a blink of an eye ago that I last saw the pond. Or it might have been an eternity.

The Cunning Man's Wife

2011-12-30T00:15:00.000Z

So when the Cunning man wanted a wife, what did he do? White Mary had faded from public view and it was the Cunning Man that people came to consult so he was now well known. Few were the women who would come to live in his cottage in the Haunted Wood. But there was one with a bit of independence of mind who had caught his eye, and he thought he had caught hers. So he went to her , and he wooed her, and in due time she came home with him as his wife.

But that was just the start if it. As they passed Mary’s cottage he pointed out the nosegay of herbs Mary had left for her. But they were green and grey for the most part and she paid little heed of them. That was her first mistake. When they entered the cottage the spaniel, who could be either there or not there, as was needed, was not there, as she had no need or heed of her. That was her second mistake.

‘Oh well’, thought her husband, ‘She’ll learn’.A few days later, when she had settled in, he had to go out for the day and would not be back until late that night. Before he went he warned her not to move or change anything around the cottage. Later that morning she went out to the well for water. Just beyond the well an ash tree’s branches hung down and were bedecked with seven bright ribbons. She took two for her hair. The well itself was difficult to get to because of the stones arranged around it. So she moved them.

During the afternoon she started to get a feeling that she was being watched, but she ignored it. Then as evening drew a shade across the forest, she began to hear noises. She looked out through the front door and realised that the ash tree was right up against the house. How had that happened? Then she saw that one of the branches was moving towards her. She screamed and retreated into the cottage. Where could she get help? This was her only thought. And at that thought the spaniel suddenly appeared beside her. The end of a branch pushed open a window and the spaniel jumped snarling up and through the window. There was a terrible commotion outside for a while, then it subsided. She went to the window for a look and saw that the tree was gone but the spaniel was now at the well where the green head of Nicky Nye had appeared. Fear gripped her and she shrank back.

But then she heard a soft voice singing and she peeped out again through the window. A woman with a face like moonlight was walking around the well and putting the stones back in their places as she sang. By the time the Cunning Man returned all was quiet. Nicky had gone back into the well and the spaniel was sitting at his wife’s side having her ears scratched. The next morning he went out to survey the damage. The well was as it had been and Mary must have come back at first light as fresh herbs had been strewn all around. But the ash tree was gone save for a gnawn branch on the ground. He took the branch away later and came back with a sapling ash to put in the place of the one that had gone. Then Mary came with new ribbons and another nosegay which his wife took with thanks and hung over the window in their bedroom.

For the most part she got over that night and now the spaniel was at her side most of the time. But the thing she didn't get over was her fear of Nicky Nye and because he knew her fear he had power over her. He never again appeared at the well but she could feel his presence when she went down to the river so she always kept away from the water.

A few years passed and a young child was growing up in the cottage. One day he toddled down to the river as they walking towards the bridge. He looked into the water and saw Nicky looking back. Then a green arm emerged and began to encircle him and the green teeth of Nicky Nye protruded from his open mouth. The mother’s fear was tested but she found new strength and running towards the child she pulled him back, hissing at the creature. The spaniel was there too and Nicky retreated with the spaniel in pursuit. He kept away after that, but whether it was because of the spaniel or the fact that the wife had won over her fear, or that she was by now part of the magical configuration of the place, is hard to say. But so it was.

Living in the Haunted Forest

2011-12-22T16:29:00.001Z

How did the cunning man live safely in the the haunted forest?

His spaniel has been mentioned, and the tale says that it was a spayed bitch. Why?

John Aubrey in his The Remaines of Gentilism (1686-87) relates the following:

I believe all over England, a spaied bitch is accounted wholesome in a House; that is to say, they have a strong beliefe that it keeps away evill sprits from haunting of a House ; e.g. amongst many other instances, at Cranborn in Dorset about 1686, a house was haunted, and two Tenants successively went away (left the house) for that reason: a third came and brought his spaid bitch, and was never troubled.

Why should a spayed bitch have magical properties? Perhaps the lack of procreative ability concentrated the energies on psychic matters? This is a mystery that remains to be explained.

It is said, in another tale, that the cunning man had the help of his aunt, White Mary, in arranging things at his cottage: placing stones in a particular configuration, hanging ribbons in a special way on the ash tree, constructing the well surround in a way that kept the flow of sweet water running, and strewing herbs regularly to keep the surroundings wholesome.

These magical defences did not banish the spirits of the forest, but allowed the cunning man to live safely alongside them, to interact with them, and to live in harmony with the denizens of the forest. Bringing anything new into these arrangements might upset the equilibrium. This happened when the cunning man brought home a new wife. A story to be told another time.

The Cunning Man of the Haunted Forest

2011-12-08T22:56:00.001Z

Nicky Nicky Nye
He pulls you down
Underneath the water
To drown, drown, die.

Nicky was a water spirit of the malicious kind. He was notorious for grabbing children from the river bank and dragging them in. He had green teeth, green hair and green eyes. Like waterweed. But he could be as clear and transparent as the running waters when he wanted to be. In the past he had been feared by children and their mothers all along the river. But these days he tends to stay in the haunted wood, and that is what this story is about.

Few lived in the wood, or even dared to venture into it, especially after dark. Only two people lived right in the heart of the wood. One was an old wise woman. The other was her nephew, later known – after her time – as the Cunning Man of the Wood. They lived about a mile apart. He made his reputation while still a young man. But even before this folks marveled at the fact that he lived in a cottage right on Nicky’s river. But they knew his aunt and put it down to her magic: the placing of stones, the speaking of charms and the spaniel bitch, which she had given him as a puppy, and which had powers no doubt like those of the one who was said by those with a gossip’s tongue to be the old woman’s familiar.

One day a farmer from the forest edge came to the Wise Woman to ask her advice as his cows were dry and he suspected dark magic. She nodded and told him to go to her nephew who would know what to do. The farmer hesitated, then took the path to the river. He told his tale to the young man, who thought a while then turned aside and said, as if to the empty air,

“what thinks?”

As if from nowhere the spaniel was at his side with eager eyes.

“Yes, we’ll come”, he said. “At midnight”.

The farmer did not want to wait to accompany them and set off home before it was dark. They came in the gloom of the night and the spaniel sat in the meadow among the cows. A large hare comes lopping across the field and begins drinking from the udder of one of the cows. The spaniel sprang, the hare leaped, and away with them. The spaniel nipped at the hare’s heels and was all the time forcing the direction of the chase towards the river. As they arrive the spaniel barks and Nicky emerges and grabs the hare. Then a screech as the witch comes out of the hare form and struggles to get out of Nicky’s clutches. But she failed.

After that, the Wise Woman’s cottage began to fade a little, so that people sort of forgot it was there. But they know about her nephew and his spaniel. And about him there are many tales to tell of his life in the haunted wood. And maybe, soon, one or another of them will be told here if you care to call in to find out.

The Cailleach

2011-11-22T21:01:00.000Z

The following - by Tony Kelly - is from

The Archive of the Pagan Movement, circa 1975.

And when the Goddess is old and haggard? What of November when her hair is grey, when her bones are bare and the leaves are falling grey and sodden about her? Who will love her then? Old Hag of the hollow breasts and the withered arms, of the eyes that look only inward, of the empty hand, of the grasping claws that would take all, for only all will sate her... We could not leave her if we would, and would not if we could, for as the tongue forever returns to the aching tooth and grief to the very source of pain, the plight of a Goddess bereft of her all is a pain we have no will to put aside. She is fear, horror, abject despair and the withering of all hope; she is the pit out of which all that is lovely has fled and out of which meaning itself was dug.

The floor of our temple is the rolling plain, the pillars are the greenwood trees and our roof is the open sky. Come Sun, come Moon, come wind and rain, come hail and sleet or snow, there in the heat of the day or there in the eye of the blizzard, are we and the gods. Am I cold? I am the cold. Is the rain pouring down? I am the rain. I am the rush of the river, the noise of the storm, the heat of the sunshine, the lust of the May. And the priestess of Mab the Beautiful, dancing there with the girdle of hawthorn leaves... Will I remember her when she is old and the leaves are falling and she bears the elder wand and her girdle is of bones all whitened on the rain-lashed hills? Yes, I'll remember, for she is closer than breath and the dance must go on and on.

Meditation for the Waning Moon

2011-11-15T20:41:00.001Z

Light fades. It ebbs away under the dim shade of the forest trees. Darkness falls after the last blue glimmer dissolves into the stream, which carries it away. There is a hush, in spite of the rush of water through the stones of the narrow gorge. The watcher by the stones has taken a position with a view through the opening in the trees where the Moon will rise. She is waning and some time will pass after the setting of the Sun before she is visible. The sky is a deep blue-black where stars glitter, the brightness of some of them tracing familiar patterns: Orion, The Plough, The Giant's Chair. The white mist of the Milky Way recedes behind the visible stars and re-appears as a path for the watcher to walk by. When the left-handed crescent rises she appears enamelled silver-white against the sable of the sky.

The way is clear. The Otherworld wraps itself around him. He knows not where he goes, but his path stretches away in the path of the Waning Moon.

Knowing she will haunt the sky until long after the Dawn pales and herself fade in the morning light.

Somewhere between light and dark, between moonlight and sunlight, he sees a vision of a far-off land and knows that he lives there for a fleeting moment of time which is forever.

Returning, he sees the Moon reflected in the stream. The night is cold but only now is he aware of it. He touches the chill waters with his fingertips, then anoints his forehead. All is still. He blesses the night as the night has blessed him.

Harbinger of Winter

2011-10-31T17:24:00.001Z

But the night is Halloween,

.....

Just at the mirk and midnight hour

The fairy folk will ride

(Tam Lin)

Where do they ride?
Is it to the land of the Dead?
As the trees of the land respond to the longer nights with a glow of autumn gold before casting their leaves to the Earth, the life of the land fades and the faërie folk appear to fade too. In their realm they are as bright as a summer day. In ours they are shades dwelling in the long shadows cast by the low sunlight and bare trees. Skeletal as a leaf with only the sap veins remaining.

So they ride to the land of the Dead, becoming shadows of what they were in our world.
But not in their own.

Then - shaped out of grey mist - comes the Grey Mare, on a steed for the Hag of the Night.

Dreaming the Land

2011-10-20T15:12:00.000+01:00

It is said that the land of Faery is as near as breath.
So it is. And as far away as a land beyond the clouds or deep underground. That is true too. Faërie logic allows for this contradiction. The old stories of the Otherworld folk living in mounds and moving between the worlds capture this nearness while at the same time conceding that it is an invisible realm for those going about their daily business with eyes focused on the main chance.

So it is the slant look, the averted gaze, the dreaming eye that might catch a glimpse through the veil of enchantment that casts a glamour over the Otherworld. Yet to go there is not easy. Stories tell of journeys through darkness, through water and through suspended time to get there. What sort of journeys are these? They too are the journeys of dream, of trance, of stillness in a world of shifting time and space.

Deep within the living world of Nature the dream goes on, just as a dream does in the world of sleep. But this is a waking dream with a continuous existence half a glance away. Dream the land and the land will dream you; sidestep the path and a new path opens before you. To glimpse these ways into dream is an occasional privilege granted to those who care to attune their senses and be still and aware. This dream world is not insubstantial and fleeting; it is deep in its dimensions and time is everlasting. But it often comes unexpectedly and as soon fades into a barely perceived memory. The trick is to train the mind to see though the veil at will. To dream the land by charms, by spells, or by developing the clear sight conferred in the tales of faërie by the application of a special lotion and taken away by the casting into the eyes of a special dust causing blindness in the faërie realm and often, also, in the common world too. This suggests danger. Truly the Realm of Faery is a perilous realm, not to be encountered lightly.

Enchantment

2011-07-22T15:30:00.000+01:00

I know a place

Where oak trees grow

And silver-white birches too

It's very still

And very wet

And the trees are very tall.

All the leaves are green

If you go there now

And the ferns are greener still

If you go at dusk

There are owls calling

With a song of twilight shrill

And the wood so softly singing

In a language strange to hear

Yet the song it sings will find you

As the twilight draws you near.

White Bryony

2011-07-13T00:02:00.000+01:00

Bryonia dioica

"The White Bryony, whose leaf is not unlike that of the grape, has a magical reputation, and the cottage folk believe its root to be a powerful ingredient in love potions, and also poisonous. They identify it with the Mandrake. If growing in, or close to, a churchyard, its virtues are increased, for though, becoming fainter as they lengthen, the shadows of the old superstitions linger still."

So wrote the Victorian writer on country life Richard Jefferies. Mandrake, which has a root in the shape of a man, had (on Biblical authority) the reputation of being able to get women pregnant. But it was an exotic item so in Britain the herbalists used Bryony instead. The roots grow to some size and are sometimes forked when they can resemble a small baby.

Eirin Gwion (Gwion's Plums) was the name in Wales, after the miraculous child who tasted some drops from the cauldron of Cerridwen and so was inspired. Cerridwen chased him in the classic pursuit by a witch where the person chased changes shape and the witch then changes too. Eventually Gwion hid as a grain of wheat but Cerridwen became a chicken and ate him. She was then pregnant with him but when he was born abandoned him on a river for him to be found and become the legendary poet Taliesin.

This is a particularly imaginative link between the plant and childbirth. It does more than link it to stories about mandrakes but carries the mythology of the plant through to a specific birth of a legendary character. The 'plums' or berries of the plant are apparently very bitter, which is just a well as they are also poisonous in spite of being used in some herbal remedies. Perhaps these berries were one of the ingredients of the magic brew that Cerridwen was preparing when she employed Gwion to to stir the cauldron.

Vervain

2011-06-12T19:25:00.000+01:00

Vervain, from time immemorial, has been the floral symbol of enchantment. In ancient times it was much in request for all kinds of divinations and incantation. Virgil alludes to it as one of the charms used by an enchantress:

Bring running water, bind those altars round

With fillets and with vervain strew the ground (*)

Vervain is not a showy flower and could be easily missed among the grasses and the flowers growing, as it often does, by roadsides or on waste ground. This always seems to have been the case. An anonymous verse from around the year 1400 says that it may be found “by way or gate” and Gerarde’s Herball(1597) refers to it as growing “in untilled places neere unto hedges, high waies and commonly by ditches”. A Garden Dictionary of 1741 lists it as a medicinal plant gathered in the wild but “rarely cultivated in gardens”.

But as the quotation (from T F T Dyer*) above indicates, it has deep magical associations. Pliny associated it with the Gaulish druids and the word verbenae in Latin indicates boughs used in religious ceremonies, but Pliny also had a particular plant – verbena – in mind, which has since been taken to be vervain (Verbena officinalis). It was recognised in Anglo-Saxon herbalism as capable of driving away disease and also as a herb used by sorcerers. Gerarde had his reservations, and suggested that its widespread fame had evil origins: “The divell did reveale it as a secret and divine medecine”. In spite of this it continued to be used well into the 18th century. The Welsh herbal lore of the Physicians of Myddfai advised that the herb be gathered “in the name of God” and that no heed should be paid “to those who say it should be gathered in the name of the devil”. They recommended it to prevent dreams and to counter the effects of Scrophula. Perhaps Gerarde’s doubts about the plant simply reflect its magical uses

Here, to end, is a verse by the 18th century poet William Mason:

Lift your boughs of vervain blue

Dipt in cold September dew

And dash the moisture, chaste and clear,

O’er the ground, and through the air.

Now the place is purged and pure.

*Sources:
T F T Dyer The Folk Lore of Plants(1878)
David Hoffman Welsh Herbal Medicine (1960)
Geoffrey Grigson The Englishman’s Flora (1958)
J Grattan and C Singer Anglo-Saxon Medicine (1952)

MOONWORT

2011-06-02T15:28:00.000+01:00

Moonwort (Botrychium lunaria)

The first leet night, quhan the new moon set,

Quhan all was douffe and mirk,

We saddled our naigis wi' the moon-fern leif,

And rode fra Kilmerrin kirk.

Some horses were of the brume-cow framit,

And some of the greine bay tree;

But mine was made of ane humloke schaw,

And a stour stallion was he.

So James Hogg from his poem in Scots dialect The Witch of Fife. Hogg was a shepherd who was 'discovered' by Walter Scott when he was collecting folklore and ballads in the eighteenth century. Hogg often used the folkore he was steeped in as material for poetry, as here. In the dark of the night when the new moon has set they saddle horses with moon fern leaf. The horses are themselves transformed from cows, trees and a hemlock stalk. Riding on moonfern is a way of journeying to Faery. The fern itself was seen as a 'key' to the Otherworld and so could be used to transport you there on whatever conveyance might be available.

May Spell

2011-05-24T21:26:00.000+01:00

John Stewart and the Selkie

2011-04-25T23:50:00.001+01:00

(1)

Those selkie girls, they like to climb

Up onto the rocks to take the air

Peel off their seal skins and recline

As human girls in the warmth of the sun;

But if a human from from the land comes near

They’re seals again and off they swim.

John Stewart knew that this was so,

Had watched them from his boat out in the bay

But never could get close enough before they’d go.

One day he hid himself among the heather

Above the rocks washed by the highest tides

Where he knew the selkie girls would gather.

Spreading their skins upon the rocks above

They sat and sunned themselves above the spray

Or cooled themselves in pools the selkies love.

(2)

He waited until they slid into the water

Then crept out to take the skin of one he’d noticed

Above the others for her grace and beauty

Knowing that if he had her skin he’d also have her.

When he was seen the girls came out and scrambled

Onto the rocks to put their seal skins on

And swim back out into deeper waters.

But one remained, frantic, for the skin she’d shed,

Which he had folded away secretly.

He said to her ‘Come home with me

To be my wife and I will love you

For now you cannot go back to the sea’.

For nine years she lived with him

And bore him two girls and a boy

But gazing over the waves from the rocky shore

Her thoughts strayed often to her selkie kin.

(3)

One day she looked up and saw a leak

Dripping through the thatch of their cottage

And climbed up into the roofspace to check.

Then she saw it, lined in the thatch,

The skin she had shed nine years before,

Dry and wrinkled now, but intact.

Her husband was away at sea and she

Felt the swell of the waves, and the taste

Of the the tear on her cheek was salty.

So she took the skin and called to her children,

For the last time, her heart breaking,

Fed them, bade them be good, and kissed them

Went to the beach and put on the skin,

Felt a shiver as the chill waves touched it

And swam, as a seal, back to the ocean.

Rigantona

2011-04-18T21:04:00.000+01:00

It seemed so long ago, but also no more than a moment, since that day she passed through. It is like that for gods. Time is both Eternity and instantaneous; Space is both Infinity and as close as breath. But things had been ebbing away then. That fading that is one of the waves of her being, one of the drifts of her thought: that time when the Grey Mare was led into the stable. When she wore a dark shroud ….. Wasn’t that someone else?

So long ago compared to now. Apple blossom gleams in the morning sunshine. A drifting mist of early dawn clears slowly as the day warms. As it clears, she rides her white steed through the gate of dawn.

In a forest – its floor a mist of bluebells – her birds stir. Their song covers the last echoes of winter, brings the burgeoning of spring and the promise of summer.

As she rides she listens. She hears the song of the birds even as she calls upon them to sing. The awakening land responds as her senses sharpen to the breeze, the sun, the green leaves of her flowering trees. Who does she seek? What else does she listen for?

The songs her people sing for her, as she rides for them.

Rigantona of the days before,
Rhiannon of the days that come after,
Great Queen, your people do you homage
As you come again amongst us and your land awakens.

Rigantona, we strew rose petals about your altar
For your coming from the Otherworld.

Ursilla and the Selkie

2011-04-06T22:43:00.000+01:00

Ursilla was not happily married. And what she could not get from her husband, she sought elsewhere. No other man on the island would do. So she looked to the Selkie folk.

She went early one morning, to sit on a rock at the high-tide mark, and when the tide was washing against the rock, she shed seven tears and let them fall into the sea. This is what you must do if you wish to speak with the Selkie folk. Then, out of the grey light of the dawn over the sea, she saw the Selkie coming towards her through the waves. She spoke to him of her desire, her tongue freed by his unearthly beauty and his own direct manner.

He said he would visit her at the Seventh Stream of the spring tide, and he would come in human form. She came at the appointed time and he was there on the rocks before her with the waves washing at his heels. She went with him under the cliffs, hand in hand, her cold, hard beauty softening as they went and he gazed upon her with his eyes like wells of clear spring water.

It is said that, later, she had a child with webbed feet, though this is not confirmed. Nothing ever is where the Selkie folk are concerned. Did Ursilla walk, hand in hand, with a Selkie in human form? Did a seal man come from the sea to her? Certainly she sat on that rock and shed those tears. Certainly a seal’s head bobbed out of the water as she did so. But there the certainty ends. For that is how it is with the Selkie folk.

(A version of a folk tale from Orkney.)

Rainbow

2011-04-04T00:23:00.000+01:00

A faint rainbow that is there - and not there

A faërie thing fading

Out of the visible air.

A Dream

2011-04-01T17:40:00.000+01:00

This from the Archive of the Pagan Movement Ethos Group by Tony Kelly

The wood was vast and there was no sky overhead. The trees were immensely tall and very old, and belonged to the forest. They were separate trees and communicated as trees do, but they were also part of the pulse of the woodland. There was something intense about them, not human, very, very old, and the moisture on them and the tree mosses belonged to the forest. It would be perilous to interfere with them, yet it would be sacrilegious too. You couldn't help loving them because they were magic, but loving them because they were trees and because they belonged to the forest.

The light was darkened as it is in the greenwood and there were paths. But it was very quiet, and peaceful, and strangely menacing, and lovable. It wasn't the sort of place you'd want to be alone in. And it wasn't the sort of place you'd want to leave. It's the sort of place that, if Brirn had appeared with horns and cloven feet and the magic pipes, you wouldn't be too surprised.

And there was something alluring, and bewitching, and magic about it. The trees and everything growing in the greenwood was alive and it was aware, but it wasn't human awareness. It was the diffused mind of the woodland, as much one tree as another, and as much all of them, but not divided. A presence. Thinking. Brooding. Aware of the people in its midst. It was vast, but deep and quiet, immensely powerful, but passive. It was green thinks, and it belonged to all that grows in the greenwood, and all the plants that come from her womb. And green thinks are not like red thinks. They're old, and they were old when red thinks were young. Old memories, an aching sadness, and separation, but so long ago. But here in the greenwood, we were in the presence of green thinks, in its own land, on sacred ground, and the faerie mind was more powerful than the human, beckoning, but menacing, threatening, but loving.

So old, so very long ago.....

Illustration of BRIRN from The Waxing Moon published by The Pagan Movement in 1977

Where the Green Things Are

2011-03-19T12:38:00.000Z

There is a lichen – Lobaria pulmonaria – also known as ‘Tree Lungwort’ – which lives in the depths of the forest. It needs mature trees to establish itself and damp conditions away from drying winds, so small woodlands are of no use to it. It is rare in Britain because the habitat it needs is also rare. She is a faërie thing. Old, mysterious and of a time that is passing. Yet she lingers in the dark woodland whispering her spells when the moonlight filters down through the trees.

Can such things be found in the town, in a cul-de-sac or in the quiet corner of a park? Perhaps, but she would bid you follow her to where greenthinks are the thoughts that matter. To a place where such a lichen or a rare liverwort that needs the rotting trunks of dead trees to live its life, or other such green things can have their existence. Where water trickles through moss and filmy ferns to a moonlit stream. Moonthinks to the green things; To the old world which is still ever young; To the realm of Faery.

Buzzard

2011-03-10T00:08:00.001Z

Some days I see birds like buzzards and herons and I see them for their wildlife interest, as fellow creatures inhabiting the Earth . But sometimes they take on a greater significance. Birds and other creatures have also been seen as omens, spirit guides, otherworld messengers who speak to humans indirectly by their actions. Today a buzzard dipped as it flew across my path, then turned and flew back doing the same thing. I stopped and watched it as it perched on a tree looking back at me. What was its message? I didn't know, but I felt sure that I had to acknowledge the communication. Later, coming back along the same path, the buzzard again flew across, banking to one side in front of me before winging across a field to some nearby woodland.

I remember once hearing the phrase "there is another world but it is this one" and such experiences reinforce the sense of an Otherworld immanent in Nature all around us.

But how to hear the buzzard's message, go where the heron beckons, acknowledge the owl's call, find the gateway to the Otherworld from the winding path through the wood, or where the water trickles down a mossy bank? I don't know. But I do know that I have been there, unexpectedly, slipping through almost unconsciously with a sideways step off the path. But if you will it too strongly the path avoids the place and you come to the edge of the wood all too soon before the sideways step can be taken.

The Court of Faery in March

2011-03-07T21:30:00.001Z

Such cold clear days in the morning

Such sunny afternoons

and at night such stars.

So it goes so far this March. The wand of Winter is still held over the land. The Faery Court is held between bare sticks of last year's growth, pale stems of dry herbs, withered flowers. Here and there a celandine shows yellow, and, in the garden, crocuses join the snowdrops as harbingers of Spring. As for the Faery Court, held in such evanescence of growth, they remain invisible to human eyes and even to the most sensitive of souls. But we yearn for them just as they reach out to the green that is to come. Then they may be glimpsed among the ferns. For now they are a green echo in a brown and straw-bleached land.

As the weather changes (as it does constantly in this Isle of Faery):

Such misty drifting on the slopes of morning

Such cloudy skies as the day goes on

and at night the skies are a canopy through which the distant stars are barely glimpsed.

My love for the land in all its moods is absolute. Nothing would I hold back from dedication to Nature in all her moods come rain or shine.

But now, in this time of transition, I yearn for the return of the Queen of Faery and all her crew.

Starry Nights and Liminal Days

2011-02-27T19:39:00.000Z

Corkscrew Hazel in my garden

My garden is a place where many plants grow in Summer. In Winter there are few. But while the nights are longer than the days, I am drawn there by the domain of night to look at the sky. The patch I can see has as its central feature the constellation of Orion. I know this well. There on any clear night I can see the three stars of the Hunter's belt with Betelgeuse above and Rigel below. Further down from the belt gleams Sirius just above the trees. To the right of Betelgeuse is Aldebaran's red eye, to the left Procyon and further up Castor and Pollux. Right above my head if I look straight up is Capella, high and bright. And if I swivel round I can see the Giant's Chair, Cassiopeia. Beyond that is the Plough, though I would have to walk to the end of the garden and then turn round to see it over the house. On really clear nights, when the Moon is hiding her face, Capella gleams in the mist of the Milky Way. But a faint mist it is, and I have to go away from the village to see it in all its glory. This Winter, when all the land is empty and the Spring seems long in coming, look up at the wonders of the skies and think on the mysteries of the deep places beyond.

On the common where the grass lies in a damp mat and the brambles lie leafless on the sodden mounds, there is a fine bed of Winter Heliotrope newly in flower; the lilac flowers rising in spikes from the large heart-shaped leaves which remained green and fresh through the early frosts of Winter are now spread out luxuriantly beneath the blooms as if the Sun were at his zenith and not recently risen from the cauldron of the Winter Solstice.

Soon we will be looking for mild weather to bring on the early flowers of Spring. In hollows sheltered from the wind, and where the sunlight is caught, celandines and dandelions will open briefly to the middle day. Catkins already hang from hazels, long and yellow. Hard Ferns and Male Ferns still grow green on mossy banks. The stems of last year's Wood Sage stand with leaves still green below the husks of their tiny flowers. On the far side of the lake the purple buds of alders stain the foreground with a mist of purple-grey. Beyond the bare hillside is rust-brown with dead bracken, the sky grey with cloud.

But Spring waits, advancing on mild days, biding the time during cold nights, as we move towards the time when the days will be of equal length with the nights. A liminal time, when the borders of Winter begin to fade, though like all such borders, still immanent in their fading.

Thomas of Ercildoune

2011-01-19T23:42:00.001Z

In a previous entry I discussed The Ballad of Thomas the Rhymer
which tells how he was taken to Faëry for seven years. After his return to Ercildoune, where he lived in a castle, Thomas made many songs and ballads and pronounced in rhyme many prophecies. It is said that when Thomas was an old man the Fairy Queen returned for him. One day, as he stood chatting with knights and ladies, she rode from the river-side and called: "True Thomas, your time has come."
Thomas cried to his friends: "Farewell, all of you, I shall return no more." Then he mounted the milk-white steed behind the Fairy Queen, and galloped across the ford. It is said that Thomas still dwells in Fairyland, but that sometimes he goes about invisible.

Thomas has been seen, folks have told, riding out of a fairy dwelling below Eildon Hills, from another fairy dwelling below Dumbuck Hill, near Dumbarton, and from a third fairy dwelling below the boat-shaped mound of Tom-na-hurich at Inverness.
Another story about Thomas is told at Inverness. Two fiddlers, named Farquhar Grant and Thomas Cumming, natives of Strathspey, who lived over three hundred years ago, once visited Inverness during the Christmas season. They hoped to earn money by their music, and as soon as they arrived in the town began to show their skill in the streets. Although they had great fame as fiddlers in Strathspey, they found that the townspeople took little notice of them. When night fell, they had not collected enough money to buy food for supper and to pay for a night's lodging. They stopped playing and went, with their fiddles under their right arms, towards the wooden bridge that then crossed the River Ness.

Just as they were about to walk over the bridge they saw a little old man coming towards them in the dusk. His beard was very long and very white, but although his back was bent his step was easy and light. He stopped in front of the fiddlers, and, much to their surprise, hailed them by their names saying: "How fares it with you, my merry fiddlers?"
"Badly, badly!" answered Grant.
"Very badly indeed!" Cumming said.
"Come with me," said the old man. "I have need of fiddlers to-night, and will reward you well. A great ball is to be held in my castle, and there are no musicians."
Grant and Cumming were glad to get the chance of earning money by playing their fiddles and said they would go. "Then follow me and make haste," said the old man. The fiddlers followed him across the wooden bridge and across the darkening moor beyond. He walked with rapid strides, and sometimes the fiddlers had to break into a run to keep up with him. Now and again that strange, nimble old man would turn round and cry: "Are you coming, my merry fiddlers?"

In time they reached the big boat-shaped mound called Tom-na-hurich, and the old man began to climb it. The fiddlers followed at a short distance. Then he stopped suddenly and stamped the ground three times with his right foot. A door opened and a bright light streamed forth.
"Here is my castle, Cumming; here is my castle, Grant," exclaimed the old man, who was no other than Thomas the Rhymer. "Come within and make merry."
The fiddlers paused for a moment at the open door, but Thomas the Rhymer drew from his belt a purse of gold and made it jingle. "This purse holds your wages," he told them. "First you will get your share of the feast, then you will give us fine music."

As the fiddlers were as hungry as they were poor, they could not resist the offer made to them, and entered the fairy castle. As soon as they entered, the door was shut behind them. They found themselves in a great hall, which was filled with brilliant light. Tables were spread with all kinds of food, and guests sat round them eating and chatting and laughing merrily.

Thomas led the fiddlers to a side table, and two graceful maidens clad in green came forward with dishes of food and bottles of wine, and said: "Eat and drink to your hearts' content, Farquhar Grant and Thomas Cumming--Farquhar o'Feshie and Thomas o' Tom-an-Torran. You are welcome here to-night."
The fiddlers wondered greatly that the maidens knew not only their personal names but even the names of their homes. They began to eat, and, no matter how much they ate, the food on the table did not seem to grow less. They poured out wine, but they could not empty the bottles.
Said Cumming: "This is a feast indeed."
Said Grant: "There was never such a feast in Strathspey."

When the feast was ended the fiddlers were led to the ballroom, and there they began to play merry music for the gayest and brightest and happiest dancers they ever saw before. They played reels and jigs and strathspeys, and yet never grew weary. The dancers praised their music, and fair girls brought them fruit and wine at the end of each dance. If the guests were happy, the musicians were happier still, and they were sorry to find at length that the ball was coming to an end. How long it had lasted they could not tell. When the dancers began to go away they were still unwearied and willing to go on playing.

Thomas the Rhymer entered the ballroom, and spoke to the fiddlers, saying: "You have done well, my merry men. I will lead you to the door, and pay you for your fine music." The fiddlers were sorry to go away. At the door Thomas the Rhymer divided the purse of gold between them, and asked: "Are you satisfied?"
"Satisfied!" Cumming repeated. "Oh, yes, for you and your guests have been very kind!"
"We should gladly come back again," Grant said.

When they had left the castle the fiddlers found that it was bright day. The sun shone from an unclouded sky, and the air was warm. As they walked on they were surprised to see fields of ripe corn, which was a strange sight at the Christmas season. Then they came to the riverside, and found instead of a wooden bridge a new stone bridge with seven arches.
"This stone bridge was not here last night," Cumming said.
"Not that I saw," said Grant.

They crossed the bridge but no sooner than they did so than the two fiddlers crumbled into dust.

Such is the story of the two fiddlers who spent a hundred years in a fairy dwelling, thinking they had played music there for but a single night.

Mari Lwyd

2011-01-04T15:44:00.003Z

An example of this old folk festival of carrying a horse's head from house to house at new Year - in Welsh!

For a use of this tradition shifted into the mythological realm as a story go

HERE

SOLSTICE

2010-12-20T21:02:00.001Z

25 minute podcast featuring Santa as 'The Shaman'

(an antidote to over-commercialised 'Christmas' cheer):

HERE

Prayer

2010-12-06T23:23:00.000Z

Graunt that no Hobgoblins fright me

No hungrie devils rise up and bite me;

No Urchins, Elves or drunkards Ghoasts

Shove me against walles or posts.

O graunt that I may no black thing touch.

Though many men love to meet such.

John Day

The Knockers of the Mines

2010-11-16T18:09:00.007Z

In Welsh faerie lore the 'Knockers' are spirits of the mines or caverns who make strange sounds deep in the earth and may try to prevent mining activities which disturb them. In the following account from George Borrow's Wild Wales (1862), a miner tells Borrow of such an experience:

"Do you like the life of a miner?" said I.

"Very much," said he, "and should like it more, but for the noises of the hill."

"Do you mean the powder blasts?" said I.

"Oh no!" said he, "I care nothing for them; I mean the noises made by the spirits of the hill in the mine. Sometimes they make such noises as frighten the poor fellow who works underground out of his senses. Once on a time I was working by myself very deep underground, in a little chamber to which a very deep shaft led. I had just taken up my light to survey my work, when all of a sudden I heard a dreadful rushing noise, as if an immense quantity of earth had come tumbling down. 'Oh God!' said I, and fell backwards, letting the light fall, which instantly went out. I thought the whole shaft had given way, and that I was buried alive. I lay for several hours half stupefied, thinking now and then what a dreadful thing it was to be buried alive. At length I thought I would get up, go to the mouth of the shaft, feel the mould, with which it was choked up, and then come back, lie down, and die. So I got up and tottered to the mouth of the shaft, put out my hand and felt - nothing; all was clear. I went forward, and presently felt the ladder. Nothing had fallen; all was just the same as when I came down. I was dreadfully afraid that I should never be able to get up in the dark without breaking my neck; however, I tried, and at last, with a great deal of toil and danger, got to a place where other men were working. The noise was caused by the spirits of the hill in the hope of driving the miner out of his senses. They very nearly succeeded. I shall never forget how I felt when I thought I was buried alive. If it were not for those noises in the hill, the life of a miner would be quite heaven below."

The Dog of Peace and the Fairy Man

2010-10-01T00:15:00.001+01:00

I saw the figure of a man, and what appeared to be an animal of some kind, coming across the bog with great speed, in the direction of myself; the nature of the ground seemed to offer but little impediment to these beings, both clearing the holes and abysses which lay in their way with surprising agility; the animal was, however, some slight way in advance, and, bounding over the dyke, appeared on the road just before me. It was a dog, of what species I cannot tell, never having seen the like before or since; the head was large and round; the ears so tiny as scarcely to be discernible; the eyes of a fiery red: in size it was rather small than large; and the coat, which was remarkably smooth, as white as the falling flakes. It placed itself directly in my path, and showing its teeth, and bristling its coat, appeared determined to prevent my progress. I had an ashen stick in my hand, with which I threatened it; this, however, only served to increase its fury; it rushed upon me, and I had the utmost difficulty to preserve myself from its fangs.

'What are you doing with the dog, the fairy dog?' said a man, who at this time likewise cleared the dyke at a bound.

[ ….. some conversation, partly in Irish . . …]

But now with a whisking sound came running down the road a hare; it was nearly upon us before it perceived us; suddenly stopping short, however, it sprang into the bog on the right-hand side; after it amain bounded the dog of peace, followed by the man, but not until he had nodded to me a farewell salutation. In a few moments I lost sight of him amidst the snowflakes.

George Borrow From Lavengro Chapter XII

(Borrow’s delightful but often prosaic writings are sometimes suddenly enlivened by his encounters with gypsies, horse-whisperers, snake-tamers and other characters. The above is an autobiographical account of an incident from his childhood when he lived for a time in Ireland).

The Vixen and the Oakman

2010-06-25T21:27:00.001+01:00

The hounds were closing in on the fox and she was beginning to tire. As she slowed to a weary pace, the hawthorn tree said

“Jump up on me then run along the high stone wall”.

“I’m too tired to jump up” said Fox, “but thank you kindly”.

“There’s a water gap in the wall just here”, said Hawthorn, “squeeze through to the forest like Hedgehog does. They’ll have to go two miles around the wall to follow you”.

“I’m not a hedgehog”, said Fox. But then she heard the hounds and squeezed into the gap and eventually wriggled through, though she left much of her pelt on the stones.

“Thank you Hawthorn”, she said before limping off into the forest.

One of the hounds came to the gap and sniffed the scent of Fox. He lifted his head to bay, but Hawthorn dropped a bunch of haws into his throat and made him cough instead.

“Give her a chance” said Hawthorn, “you’re twice her size. She may be a vixen but she’s got good manners and doesn’t cough and splutter all over my roots.”

The hounds went round the wall into the forest and soon picked up the scent of Fox again. She was limping badly now and stopped to rest in the bracken.

“Oh Holly Tree, block the way behind me” she said.

But Holly was barren and did not answer, but beckoned. Fox slid away and made for a great oak.

“Please let me in” she pleaded. “I bring news”.

Oakman doubted Fox’s words but pulled her safe inside anyway, for he guards all forest creatures.

Once inside she gasped “Your mistletoe bough – men with axes – going to cut it down – I heard them say so.”

“You came through danger to tell us that?”

“Yes”, said Fox.

The hunt went past and Fox bathed her sore paws in Oak’s rainpool.

“Keep away from Barren Holly” said Oak as Fox left. She meant to.

*

Lake District, collected in the 1940’s.

TIDDY MUN

2010-06-08T23:58:00.000+01:00

In the old days before the dykes were made and the wet lands were drained they were full of boggarts and Will-o-the-wisps and such like, and folk dared not venture over the bogs in the dark.But there was one among all the uncanny things that made up for the rest. That was Tiddy Mun. He dwelt deep down in the green water holes and came out at evening when the mists rose. When he came out he came creeping like a limping lobelty with long white hair and a beard that was all matted and tangled all sheathed in grey so he could not easily be seen in the dark. But his whistle could be heard like a peewit laughing into the wind. He was not wicked like some of the others, but was eerie enough. But on wet seasons when the water rose to the people's doorsteps, the whole family would go out together and, shivering in the darkness, would call:

Tiddy Mun wi'out a name
Tha watter's thruff

And they would call this until the heard the whistling like a peewit across the marsh, and then they'd go home. Next morning the waters would be down. But then it was decided to drain the marshes, though the farmers would not have anything to do with it, for what would Tiddy Mun do then? But ditches were dug and the land got drier and drier and Tiddy Mun grew angry. Then the cattle began to die, and milk curdled and children pined and died in their mothers' arms. And they didn't know if it was the bogles or Tiddy Mun himself, so they all took a stoup each of water and came to the dyke edge and and poured the water out together chanting:

Tiddy Mun wi'out a name
Here's watter for thee, tak thy spell undone

They listened, but all was dead still with not a sound. Then a great wailing and whistling broke out and the sound of wailing babies, and all the mothers begged Tiddy Mun to lift his spell. And they felt cold hands touching them, and cold lips kissing them and the sound of soft wings fluttering in the dark. Then silence for a while until the sound like a peewit whistling across the marsh and they knew that Tiddy Mun was lifting the spell.

And every Full Moon they would go out with the stoups of water to say their rhyme. While they did this Tiddy Mun stayed for a while longer. But the land is all drained now and he has gone away. And the land is empty.

Thomas Stonehouse and The Hob

2010-06-08T21:59:00.002+01:00

This story was told by an old labourer on the Musgrave Estate. About the year 1760 his grandfather, Thomas Stonhouse, lived at Hob Garth. He kept a flock of sheep, and perhaps a smallholding besides. He had a malicious neighbour, Matthew Bland, of Great Fryup, who one night, for fancied grievance, broke Thomas's hedge and let all his sheep loose.

Although Thomas hunted them all day, by nightfall he had collected only five out of forty and had caught so heavy a chill that he was in bed for days afterwards. Yet in the morning all his sheep were back in the field and new posts and fixings had been put into the broken hedge.The next night every one of Bland's cattle were turned loose and it was more than a fortnight before he recovered them all.

Next day after this, all Stonehouse's sheep were again turned loose. Although his neighbours did their best to get the old man's sheep back, few were rounded up by the end of the day. But the next morning all but four were back in the field, and these were found dead, having fallen into a disused quarry. By now his neighbours were convinced that Hob was helping the old shepherd.

When he was well enough he went to the field to count the sheep and take some hay for them, as it was winter, then sat by the gate waiting for the friend who had promised to pick him up in his cart. As he sat there he was greeted by an old man of strange appearance with very long hair, very large feet, hands, eyes and mouth. He stooped as he walked with a long holly stick. He told Thomas that his lost sheep would be replaced when lambing-time came and that Matthew Bland would get what was coming to him.

When his friend arrived in the cart he was surprised to see Thomas talking to the empty air. He thought the old shepherd's mind was beginning to wander. When lambing-time came, though winter had returned for a brief, bitter spell, Bland lost many lambs, but Thomas lost none, in fact many of his ewes had twins.

As the saying goes, "When t'hobman did tak ti yan, ya war yal reeght i' t' lang-run."

ↂ

(R. Blakeborough,

Wit, Character, Folklore and Customs of the North Riding of Yorkshire, 1898)

Pixy-Led

2010-05-13T21:33:00.001+01:00

The Pixies, as the fairies of Devon and Cornwall are usually called, were often said to lead people astray. The term ‘Pixy-Led’ was used to describe this occurrence. In the The Western Daily Mercury newspaper for 6 June 1890 there is an account of one of a group of men working in a woodland who left the others to go back for a tool as they went home for the evening. A strange feeling came over him and he heard voices and laughter all around him. That was the last he remembered. When he didn’t come home with the others his wife went to look for him. She found him wet and bedraggled sitting in a stream, not knowing where he was. He had been ‘Pixy-Led’. When he saw his wife he came to his senses and she told him he should have turned his pockets out or reversed his coat as this was a defence against the pixies. The newspaper report mentions others who were led astray in this way and remained under the spell of the pixies until dawn.

In other parts of the country, fairies are said to lead travellers astray with lights such as the will-o-the-wisps on marshes. These tales don’t usually give a reason other than mischievousness for the practice. But this tale from Yorkshire does:

A tailor once boasted that he would like to catch a fairy and keep her captive. On his way home one evening he somehow lost his way. He dropped his scissors and couldn’t find them. Other items in his work bag fell away into the twilight. Then he saw a beautiful girl holding a light. He called to her to help him but she didn’t move, so he went towards her. But as he got nearer she seemed to get farther away. He followed her and the light seemed at one moment very close but the next moment far distant. She led him here and there for several hours, then disappeared leaving him utterly lost and bewildered in the darkness.

Mermaids and May Dew

2010-04-24T20:26:00.001+01:00

John Reid loved Helen Stuart, but she thought she could do better. But if she wouldn’t consider him, he would consider no other. So he bided his time.

There was a custom among the girls to go out early on Mayday morning to gather May Dew. John also rose early, before dawn, on that morning and watched the Sun rise by the Dropping Cave where wishes might be granted if you encountered the Mermaid.

As the morning filled with light, John heard an unearthly voice singing. It was coming from the rocks where the sea washed into the cave. So John went down into the back of the cave and followed the ledge to its entrance. There he saw her, her hair hanging down her back, and he was spellbound by her song and by the sight of her. He might have remained mesmerised but she was looking the other way or her spell might have made him cast himself into the rocky water to swim to her. But the thought of Helen gathering the May Dew saved him. He followed the ledge through the side of the cave and down onto the beach so that he could approach the Mermaid from the seaward side.

When she saw him her voice changed and the song near froze the blood in his veins. He held his ground for a moment to gain his resolve, then approached her.

“Man what with me?”, she said in a voice that was both enticing and repelling, so that he felt that he hovered briefly between and solid world and the water world, though he held on to the formula that the lore he had learned required when dealing with Mermaids. He replied:

“Wishes Three”

He asked that he would never be drowned at sea, as his father had been, and this was the traditional first wish, and in the Mermaid’s power to grant.

He asked that he would prosper in all his undertakings at sea. This, rather than the desire for specific wealth, was also traditional and might be influenced by the Mermaid’s powers.

The third wish should be unstated, but must have to do with water. So it was well that the gathering of May Dew by Helen was on his mind.

“Quit and have!”, she said, “And unbar my way to the sea”.

So John retreated and the waves washed over the rocks and she was away.

He climbed up onto the knoll above and across to the place known as Lovers Leap where he found Helen telling her friend about a strange dream, that she had been gathering the May Dew and had heard an unearthly song and seen John Reid on the beach below the knoll, and the words of the song spoke to her and the drops of dew turned into a shower of gold. As the dream ended she saw the Mermaid sliding through the waves of the sea.

Now John came to her through the mounds where primroses blossomed and spoke too of having seen the Mermaid. The last time she had been seen was when John’s father had drowned. So Helen was fearful, and she said,

“Do not tell, for they thrive ill who carry tales from the Other World to this.”

Helen was so affected by the events of that morning that she allowed John to walk her home, and the bond was forged, and on the next May Day they were betrothed.

(adapted from: Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland,

Hugh Miller, Edinburgh 1872)

Faërie Ointment

2010-03-30T22:38:00.001+01:00

It is a common theme of tales of faery that a special ointment is put on the eyes of their babies to enable them to see things that humans can’t see. Sometimes humans get to use the ointment, but if they are found out they are made blind by the faeries. This theme occurs in stories from many different locations and with some variations, Here’s part of a Shetland tale that contains it:

On another occasion when Kirstan was among the Trows, she had to dress a baby and one of the grey men brought a box of curious ointment with which the child was to be anointed. While doing this Kirstan chanced to put up her hand to her eye and wiped some of the ointment onto it. From that time her sight was so keen that she could see a boat on the ocean twenty miles away and could tell the position and features of every man in it. One day a trowman met her on the hill and says to her

“Ye travel light and brisk for sae auld a wife.”

Never suspecting who he was she replied

“It’s my güde sight that helps me alang.”

“And which eye do ye see best upon, güde wife?” he asked.

Kirstan told him and he instantly put his little finger in the eye and she was blind in it ever after.

(from ‘Marie Kirstan the Midwife’)

Humans called to look after faërie babies sometimes get to use the ointment in this way. It does not always confer sharp-sightedness, as here, but usually gives humans the ability to see faeries, or see into the faërie realm, when others can’t.

The most common reason given for blinding is when humans see ‘invisible’ faeries stealing goods in the market and challenge them, thereby giving themselves away.

The desire to see into the Realm of Faery and so look beyond the edge of this world into the Otherworld, manifests itself in a number of ways. The theme of the magic ointment gained from the faeries themselves is one such. At the edge of what we know, or can know, the Otherworld beckons. Properly attuned, we might catch glimpses of it in the twilight, through the mist, or at special times of year. At other times, there is always the ointment, if you care to risk losing your sight altogether.

The Fairy Widower at the Crossroads

2010-03-26T21:14:00.002Z

Photo (c) Martin Liebermann

Jenny’s family were poor, and her cloak was tattered, and food was scarce, so her mother sent her to seek for a position, so she might earn her keep, and perhaps send some money home. So off she went. After walking a while she rested at a crossroads, pulling at some fern leaves that grew there.

Suddenly there was a man standing before her who asked her what she wanted. So she told him.

“That’s right Jane”, he said “and I’m here to offer you what you seek.”

Jenny started. No-one but her mother ever called her Jane, and she had never seen this man before. But he said

“I’ve watched you looking at yourself in the dewpond from the other side.”

Then, pointing to some petals of violets in her hair, “and I’ve watched you help yourself to these violets of mine to twine in your tresses.”

Jenny didn’t know what to say, but the man continued, “Will you come to my house and look after my young child?”

She thought this was what she was seeking, so she said

“Yes, when should I come?”

“At once”, he replied.

She agreed then to go with him.

“Not yet”, he says, “You must swear my oath.”

Jenny looked frightened.

“Don’t worry”, he says, “you must kiss this fern leaf and say ‘For a-year-and-a-day I promise to stay’.”

So she kissed the fern leaf and said

For a-year-and-a-day

I promise to stay

and at that the man led her away.

They walked for miles until Jenny asked to stop and began to weep for tiredness.

“There are no tears of sorrow in my world”, the man said, and he took a fern leaf and drew it across her eyes. As he did so the tears disappeared and she found herself in another world where flowers glittered like gemstones in clear sunlight.

The man himself was transformed too and appeared to shine with translucent radiance as he led her through a forest to a clearing containing a large structure that might have been formed from trees, or from stone, or from a trick of the light. She could not decide. But here she was to spend a-year-and-a-day looking after a young child.

It seemed sometimes to Jenny that the time there was forever, as she could imagine no other time, and she came to love the child she cared for, and her every need was met.

But it also seemed that the year-and-a-day passed in no more than seconds when, at the end of it, she found herself suddenly back at the crossroads which appeared unchanged, except that the ferns had gone and instead some thistles grew there.

Around Jenny’s shoulders was a new cloak which always kept her warm when she was cold, and dry when she as wet, and snug when she wrapped it around herself to sleep. But it never became soiled or ragged or looked anything but new. And the violets in her hair were as pretty as her face and so it was not long before a farmer’s son found her and wed her, and she had her own children to care for.

The Gudeman o' Siggie Taft

2010-03-21T23:55:00.000Z

It was said that the trows had taken against the people of Siggie Taft. Here's why:

There was once a member of this family riding his grey mare and driving a red deer along the misty slopes of Stakkaberg, which was noted as a place of great danger. But this man feared nothing. As he rode along he heard a voice out of the raging torrent:

Du 'at rides de grey and rins de red

Tell Tona Tivla 'at Fona Fivla

Is faan i' de Velyna Vatjna

The words stayed with him and, arriving home, and putting his horse in the stable, he repeated them out loud. At once an 'uncanny woman' leaped out of the door of the adjoining byre and away with her. As she went he heard her saying the words

O care and dole -

Dats my bairn has fallen

In the Churning Water

When he went into the byre he found a milking pan of strange design beneath the cow which the woman had left behind her. This was kept in the house for many generations and brought good luck to the household. But each night it had to be put, with a special prayer, into the cauldron pot that hung on a ringed chain by the Hearth.

One night this was not done, and it was left out.In the morning it had disappeared. Ever since the trows have taken against the people of Siggie Taft and their luck has ended.

Adapted from (dialect modified) Shetland Folk Book II

Scothniamh

2010-03-15T20:54:00.001Z

In The Colloquy with the Ancients, as St. Patrick and Caoilte are talking with one another, a lone woman robed in mantle of green, a smock of soft silk being next her skin, and on her forehead a glittering plate of yellow gold, came to them; and when Patrick asked from whence she came, she replied: “Out of uaimh Chruachna, or ‘the cave of Cruachan’.”

Caoilte then asked: “Woman, my soul, who art thou?”

“I am Scothniamh or ‘Flower-lustre’, daughter of the Daghda's son Bodhb derg.”
Caoilte proceeded: “And what brought thee here?”

“To require of thee my marriage-gift, because once upon a time thou promised me such.”
And as they spoke Patrick broke in with: “It is a wonder to us how we see you two: the girl young and invested with all comeliness; but thou Caoilte, a withered ancient, bent in the back and dingily grown grey.”

“Which is no wonder at all,” said Caoilte, “for no people of one generation or of one time are we: she is of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who are unfading and whose duration is perennial I am of the sons of Milesius, that are perishable and fade away.”

The exact distinction is between Caoilte, a withered old ancient - in most ways to be regarded as a ghost called up that Patrick may question him about the past history of Ireland - and a fairy-woman who is one of the Sidhe or Tuatha Dé Danann.

The Brown Man of the Muirs

2010-03-08T19:23:00.000Z

Two friends went hunting on the moors for wildfowl. One of them strayed into some woodland where he had seen some birds descending. He thought he saw a movement in the distance, certainly not a bird but possibly a deer, and he walked towards it through the trees. Pausing at the bank of a stream, he saw a figure emerge from the trees on the other side of the stream. A man it was, and yet like a wild animal. He seemed to be composed of the very things of the woodland itself, of moss and bark and leaf-mould. He was not so much seen as experienced by other senses than sight, sound and smell, although all of these senses were stimulated by him. So his voice, when he spoke, was harsh and strong:

“What do yer mean by coming here after the animals I have care of?”

His voice was terrible and yet it was enticing.

”Come over here and I’ll tell yer how to behave in my woodland.”

It was as if the hunter had no choice but to put down his gun and cross the stream. Just then he heard his friend’s voice behind him and turned around. When he looked back the figure across the stream could not be seen.

“Did you see that?” he asked. But his friend had seen nothing. When he told him what had happened, his friend was fearful.

“Oh, it’s lucky I came, if you’d crossed the stream he would have torn you apart! It’s only that water that saved you. We’d better go and forget hunting for today.”

But as they were leaving a bird flew up from the undergrowth. The hunter lifted his gun and fired, bringing down the bird. But as he did so his arm froze and the chill never left it. It was said that he was cursed by the ‘Brown Man of the Muirs’ and he pined away and died soon after.

Scottish Borders/Northumberland. Passed on by letter to Walter Scott.

Said to have happened in 1641.

The Watchers by the Well

2010-02-05T21:23:00.000Z

The folk tale ‘The Watchers by the Well’ has an eerie quality of old magic about it. Its ‘frame’ narrative is about a man living alone in a forest full of wood and water spirits. He decides to look for a wife, but chooses one who appears to be unsuitable for the life he lives in the haunted wood. But he marries her anyway. Problems soon begin to occur as she wilfully interferes with the various magical defences around the cottage. The outcome of the story is that she has to learn how to live in this place and the learning process is the chief part of the plot of the tale. But the tale is also of great interest because of the various magical elements it contains. These include:
Ribbons by the Well

Ribbons, rags and other items such as pins were common around holy wells either as offerings or as magical tokens. Ribbons function here as a way of keeping the ash tree in his place. But when the wife takes them to put in her hair the tree attacks the house and is not to be seen anywhere the next day.

Ash Tree

Ash trees often appear in tales as malevolent or aggressive spirits that have to be contained or protected against. Whereas beech trees are often seen as benevolent. Tree lore is a field that needs more detailed exploration.

Wise Woman

‘White Mary’ lives nearby and is able to put right what the inexperienced wife has spoiled. She is a more positive teacher than the husband.

“White Mary stood godmother after she’d filled the gaps in the stones into the wood, and rebuilt the wishing well with mosses and herbs, and the sweet water was gushing out in its old slender spout, and there was a little ash tree nodding above it with seven ribbons.”

She is the archetypal fairy godmother, white witch and magical helper. As well as building magical defences around the house and the well she teaches the wife how to live safely in a dangerous place of spirits and dark presences.
Nick-Nicky- Nye

He is the water spirit whose green eyes frighten the wife when she sees them looking up from beneath the waters of the river. She makes the mistake of showing him her fear and so cannot wash her clothes in the river. Though she learns how to live with the other threats, Nicky is never contained. When he tries to grab her baby she needs the combined efforts of her husband, White Mary and the spayed spaniel bitch to help her.
The Spaniel

The ‘white and gold spannel’ of this story is an essential element in the protection of the house. Spayed spaniel bitches are attested elsewhere as possessing magical powers and as defenders from malevolent spirits. She keeps Nicky at bay and after the attack on the baby she eventually drives the spirit further down the river away from the house. When the ash tree attacks she defends the house and a gnawn branch is found the next day when the tree has gone. The spaniel also stands guard after the magical configuration of stones is moved by the wife.

The tale is magically evocative of the haunted forest and the way of life of those who live there with its other inhabitants. The husband, with the help of White Mary, knows exactly how to do this. But the wife has to learn. The use of standard folk-tale motif of the ‘disobedient wife’ perhaps exaggerates her wilfulness in failing to follow the proper observances. She initially tramples White Mary’s good-luck nosegay into the ground, moves the ‘untidy’ stones and kicks the spaniel. The husband’s attempt to teach her how to behave by beating her owes more to the standard tale format than to the lessons she has to learn to survive in the haunted wood. But she does learn. And what she learns is something akin to The Fern Law of Faery. She learns to live with the wood spirits, bogles and the like. At the conclusion of the tale the spaniel comes to sit by her at the fireside indicating the completion of the learning process.

***

This tale appears in Katherine Briggs’ Dictionary of British Folk Tales {Part A Vol 1. pp 554-560}. It was collected by Ruth Tongue from a travelling gipsy but assigned to the Welsh-English border area. Another tale, featuring the same characters and haunted wood, but before the wife has arrived, is ‘The Harbourer and the Hare’ but this tale was collected in a different part of the country.

The Wondrous Wood

2010-01-13T15:55:00.001Z

Once there was a wild and wicked warlord who ruled his territory fiercely so that all feared him and his band of retainers and unwillingly did his will. Worse still, he was lecherous and lustful and no girl or young woman was safe from him.

Within his territory was a forest, and within that a wondrous wood that no-one ventured into for it was deemed to be a perilous place. In the forest, not far from the wood, lived an old lady with her grand daughter. She span yarn and teaching the girl to do the same. On market days the old lady would take yarn to sell or to trade for food and other goods. She went alone and left the girl in the house, especially now that she had become of an age where she might attract the attentions of the tyrant.

But one market day the old lady was too ill to go to market so the girl was sent to trade quickly for some essential food and then to return without dallying. But as she came to the edge of the forest the tyrant was out riding and he saw her. She turned back but could see no way of escape without straying into the perilous wood. So she went into it until she came to a great oak barring her way. She stopped and paid her respects, then asked leave to pass. There was a shiver of leaves and she saw a way ahead through the trees.

She walked thro’ the wood where the oaken tree stood

And she curtsied did she to the oaken tree

And he let her go down to the town, the town

From the wood, the wonderful wood.

The tyrant followed her into the wood, but when he came to the great oak tree he slashed with his whip and tried to pass. As he did so a large branch came crashing down and killed him stone dead.

He rode through the wood, where the oaken tree stood

And he cursed, did he, at the oaken tree

And he took out his blade to capture the maid

But a bough fell quick and it broke his neck

In the wood, the wonderful wood.

When he didn’t return, his men came after him. But the wood closed about them and they were never seen in the world again.

O they rode to the wood where the oaken tree stood

To cut down the tree, the oaken tree,

Then the tree gave a groan and summoned his own

For the trees closed about and they never got out

Of the wood, the wonderful wood.

As for the girl she returned safely from market. So that was alright, wasn’t it?

Collected in Warwickshire from Miss Lily Kingston Streetly in 1916.

The Wal at the Warld's End

2010-01-10T19:45:00.001Z

This Scots dialect tale has more in common with 'Three Golden Heads' than others with the 'Well at the World's End' (and similar) titles.

Here the bonny king's daughter arrives at the well and it is too deep to dip the bottle in. "Three scaud men's heads" ask her to wash and dry them with her apron and she does so. They then dip the bottle in for her and also confer wealth and beauty upon her.

The ugly queen's daughter is then sent but refuses to wash and dry the men's heads. She is made even more ugly and blighted with further afflictions.

What is going on here? Is this a fertility theme? In George Peele's 16th century play which employs these folk-tale sources, the verse reference:

Fair maid white and red
You shall have some cockle bread
refers to a bawdy term at the time where "kneading cockle bread" was a term for female masturbation. The actual reference seems to be to the fact that the maid will get a husband. This is the case with both daughters here, though one gets a prince and the other a poor cobbler who beats her. Does each girl have to confront maleness in order to make the transition to marriage? If so it is simply a variant on the 'kissing the frog' theme which is linked to the other 'Well at the World's End' stories.

This is an aspect emphasised, also, by the fact that each of the girls is offered a ride on a pony "over Hecklepin Heath" on the way to the well, but only the 'bonny' daughter accepts the ride.

Three Golden Heads in the Well

2009-12-28T22:56:00.003Z

This version from English Folk and Fairy Tales, by Joseph Jacobs. There is a slightly longer version in the Norton Collection. Is the king of Colchester Cunobelinus – later popularized as Old King Cole? It is interesting that the quest narrative, usually the part of a young male, is here undertaken by a female. Who are these fairies of the well? Or rather well spirits being not uncommon in faerie lore, why are there three of them? The story is referred to in some verses by George Peele in his play The Old Wive’s Tale (1595). These are discussed HERE

❈❈❈

LONG before Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, there reigned in the eastern part of England a king who kept his court at Colchester. In the midst of all his glory, his queen died, leaving behind her an only daughter, about fifteen years of age who for her beauty and kindness was the wonder of all that knew her. But the king hearing of a lady who had likewise an only daughter, had a mind to marry her for the sake of her riches, though she was old, ugly, hook-nosed, and hump-backed. Her daughter was a yellow dowdy, full of envy and ill-nature; and, in short, was much of the same mould as her mother. But in a few weeks the king, attended by the nobility and gentry, brought his bride to the palace, where the marriage rites were performed. She had not been long in the Court before she set the king against his own beautiful daughter by false reports. The young princess having lost her father's love, grew weary of the Court, and one day, meeting with her father in the garden, she begged him, with tears in her eyes, to let her go and seek her fortune, to which the king consented, and ordered her mother-in-law to give her what she pleased. She went to the queen, who gave her a canvas bag of brown bread and hard cheese, with a bottle of beer. Though this was but a pitiful dowry for a king's daughter, she took it, with thanks, and proceeded on her journey, passing through groves, woods, and valleys, till at length she saw an old man sitting on a stone at the mouth of a cave, who said:

"Good morrow, fair maiden, whither away so fast?" "Aged father," says she, "I am going to seek my fortune."

"What have you got in your bag and bottle?"

"In my bag I have got bread and cheese, and in my bottle good small beer. Would you like to have some?"

"Yes "said he, "with all my heart."

With that the lady pulled out the provisions, and bade him eat and welcome. He did so, and gave her many thanks, and said: "There is a thick thorny hedge before you, which you cannot get through, but take this wand in your hand, strike it three times, and say, “Pray, hedge, let me come through,” and it will open immediately; then, a little further, you will find a well; sit down on the brink of it, and there will come up three golden heads, which will speak; and whatever they require, that do." Promising she would, she took her leave of him. Coming to the hedge and using the old man's words and the wand, it divided, and let her through. Coming to the well, she had no sooner sat down than a golden head came up singing:

"Wash me and comb me,

And lay me down softly.

And lay me on a bank to dry,

That I may look pretty,

When somebody passes by."

"Yes," said she, and taking it in her lap combed it with a silver comb, and then placed it upon a primrose bank. Then up came a second and a third head, saying the same as the former. So she did the same for them. Then, pulling out her provisions, she sat down to eat her dinner.

Said the heads one to another: "What shall' we weird for this damsel who has used us so kindly?"

The first said: "I weird her to be so beautiful that she shall charm the most powerful prince in the World"

The second said: "I weird her such a sweet voice as shall far exceed the nightingale."

The third said: "My gift shall be none of the least, as she is a king's daughter, I'll weird her so fortunate that she shall become queen to the greatest prince that reigns."

She then let them down into the well again, and so went on her journey. She had not travelled long before she saw a king hunting in the park with his nobles. She would have avoided him, but the king, having caught sight of her, approached, and what with her beauty and sweet voice, fell desperately in love with her, and soon induced her to marry him.

This king finding that she was the king of Colchester's daughter, ordered some chariots to be got ready, that he might pay the king, his father-in-law a visit. The chariot in which the king and queen rode was adorned with rich gems of gold. The king, her father, was at first astonished that his daughter had been so fortunate, till the young king let him know of all that had happened. Great was the joy at Court amongst all, with the exception of the queen and her daughter, who were ready to burst with envy. The rejoicings, with feasting and dancing continued many days. Then at length they returned home with the dowry her father gave her.

The hump-backed princess, perceiving that her sister had been so lucky in seeking her fortune, wanted to do the same; so she told her mother, and all preparations were made, and she was furnished with rich dresses, and with sugar, almonds, and sweet meats, in great quantities, and a large bottle of Malaga sack. With these she went the same road as her sister; and coming near the cave, the old man„ said: "Young woman, whither so fast?"

"What's that to you?" said she.

"Then," said he, "what have you in your bag and bottle?

She answered: "Good things, which you shall not be troubled with."

"Won't you give me some?" said he.

"No, not a bit, nor a drop, unless it would choke you.

The old man frowned, saying: "Evil fortune; attend ye!"

Going on, she came to the hedge, through which she espied a gap, and thought to pass through it, but the hedge closed, and the thorns ran into her flesh, so that it was with great difficulty that she got through. Being now all over blood, she searched for water to wash herself, and, looking round she saw the well. She sat down on the brink of it, and one of the heads came up saying: "Wash me, comb me, and lay me down softly," as before, but she banged it with her bottle, saying, "Take that for your washing." So the second and third heads came up, and met with no better treatment than the first, whereupon the heads consulted among themselves what evils to plague her with for such usage.

The first said "Let her be struck with leprosy in her face"

The second: "Let her voice be as harsh as corncrake's."

The third said: "Let her have for husband but a poor country cobbler."

Well, on she went till she came to a town, and it being market-day, the people looked at her, and, seeing such an ugly face, and hearing such a squeaky voice, all fled but a poor country cobbler. Now he not long before had mended the shoes of an old hermit, who, having no money, gave him a box of ointment for the cure of the leprosy, and a bottle of spirits for a harsh voice. So the cobbler, having a mind to do an act of charity, was induced to go up to her and ask her who she was.

"I am," said she, "the king of Colchester's daughter-in-law."

"Well," said the cobbler, "if I restore you to your natural complexion, and make a, sound cure both in face and voice, will you in reward take me for a husband?"

"Yes, friend," replied she, "with all my heart!"

With this the cobbler applied the remedies, and they made her well in a few weeks; after which they were married, and so set forward for the Court at Colchester. When the queen found that her daughter had married nothing but a poor cobbler, she hanged herself in wrath. The death of the queen so pleased the king, who was glad to get rid of her so soon, that he gave the cobbler a hundred pounds, to quit the Court with his lady, and take to a remote part of the kingdom, where he lived many years mending shoes, his wife spinning the thread for him.

TRAVELLER'S REST

2009-12-15T21:45:00.001Z

Here is another gem from the pages of the Pagan Movement Ethos Group. This one is from the latter part of the 1970's and is well worth making the effort to read.

*****

TRAVELLER'S REST by Janian Richardson

Old Lilah Heron awoke with a start, as though something light as a leaf blown from the woods had brushed her cheek. She had fallen asleep while carving chrysanthemums with long, curling petals from the sticks she had gathered that morning. Now the wood in her little stove had fallen apart into a mass of grey ash, without warmth or light, and the long shadows of early evening filled her caravan. She would have to move quickly to gather more wood before it grew dark.

She wrapped her brown woollen shawl around her thin shoulders and pushed her feet into ancient, awkward-looking boots. Though old, she was straight and tall yet, and her grey hair still carried streaks of raven black. Taking her basket and hazel stick, Lilah climbed down the three little steps outside her front door and made her way towards the woods behind the caravan. Solitude held no terrors for Lilah: she had been alone for fifteen years since Nathaniel had died, and the high-speed way of life that most of the travelling folk had adoped, whirling around in caravans harsh with chrome and drawn by cars instead of the proud horses of yesterday, was not for her. She much preferred to stay here, on the border of the great forest, in the little wooden caravan Nathaniel had built with his own hands.

In the soft grey light the woods looked magnificant, reaching high into the air and blazing like a great fire with the reds and golds of October's end. As she picked her way across the pitted surface of the field, Lilah smiled to herself. She was remembering Octobers long past, when all her relations would be gathered on country farms. Hopping was ended, and most of the fruit safely in, and it would soon be time to forage for potatoes in the rich damp Earth. The hedges, then as now, were entwined with travellers' joy, its fragrance like woodsmoke and smoky, too, its delicate grey fronds. And there were spindleberries, clear and pink, and rose hips for jam, and a thousand gossamer webs strung with jewels in the sunrise. Then stars at night, and a snap of frost, and the comfort of a fire shared with her loved ones under the glittering sky.

Lilah felt a lump of pain rise in her breast. Those Autumn evenings had never been the same since Jasper-John, her dearest brother only two years older than herself, had drowned in the weir at Nettlestead. Cold that evening had been, and raw, flayed by grey thongs of mist . . She would not think of that now. But as Lilah skirted the forest, ever watchful for dry wood, and as she stooped to gather sticks, or paused to admire a slender tree shimmering with golden leaves, she felt as though she had company, and could imagine Jasper-John, with his black curly hair and eyes alight with mischief, running beside her. Once, the sensation was so strong that she swung round - and started a large hare, who cocked his ears at her and lolloped off into the shelter of a thorn bush.

Now Lilah was within the great woods, treading bracken and pine needles, and fallen leaves like a store of treasure all about her. The light was very dim, and Lilah's eyes were not as keen as in years gone by, so now and again she would seize a swatch of dead fern or an old puffball, powdering between her fingers, in mistake for the wood she sought. However, on she foraged until her rush basket was heavy with wood and she was quite out of breath. Panting, Lilah leaned against a tree. High it loomed into the darkening sky, seeming almost to penetrate it; around its trunk coiled a thick rope of ivy. How strong it felt to Lilah, almost comforting, and her old eyes became moist. Nathaniel had reminded her, many a time, of a tree, sturdy and sheltering in times of trouble. Now he, too, was gone: a fall from a ladder had damaged his back and his strength had never returned. In the thickening darkness, with her arms tight around the trunk of the tree, it was easy to envisage him striding through the woods towards her, brown as a hazel nut and love gleaming in his dark eyes. Lilah spent several minutes in bittersweet dreaming, until she suddenly realised how cold it had grown. She opened her eyes. It was completely dark: a thin mist was threading between the trees, which showed as strange black clusters against the night. Some had lost all their leaves, and pointed stark horns and bony fingers towards a sky unbroken my moon or stars. Lilah, who had spent a lifetime among the woods, now felt afraid. She had ventured far deeper into the forest than she had meant to, and it was many years since she had been alone in the woods by night. She breathed deeply, and gradually became calmer. Swathes of the love of the forest returned to her. She would not be able to retrace her steps by sight, so perhaps, if she could hear the stream that ran through the forest, she could follow that? And sure enough, as she let her mind relax and wander along the woodland paths, Lilah heard a very faint trickling away to her left. Step by step, her hazel stick seeking the pathway, and clutching her basket of wood, she came to the stream. She was trembling now: her age was heavy upon her and the cold ate into her bones. Each step seemed to last for an hour. As she picked her way along the bank of the stream, twigs and thorn tore spitefully at her limbs and her feet sank deep into oozing mud, which slithered icily into the tops of her boots. The mist had thickened to a dense pall and not even the tree-shapes were visible. Owls cried like frightened children, and once, when Lilah walked full into a prickly bush and was blindly struggling to disengage herself, she heard a thick grunting and crackling, as of a large animal pushing through undergrowth, close behind her. In a surge of panic she stumbled forward and fell headlong into the mud. She had not released her stick, and it aided her in rising, but her basket of wood was lost and a jagged pain tore at her chest.

A few more steps, weaker now, and at last Lilah could see an opening in the wood's dark curtains. Now she stood outside, shivering with pain and cold, and a strange slapping sound carried across the field. Lilah knew it well: it was the sound of someone washing in the stream, slapping the clothes against the stones as she had done so often herself, and her mother before her, and her grandmother before either of them. Who on Earth would be washing at the darkest hour of a cold October night? Then the Moon showed pale and wan through a tear in the clouds, and Lilah saw that she was beside the little brook that crossed the fields about a mile from her caravan. And there, by the side of the stream, crouched a figure, and in the moonlight her hair flowed down her back like a midnight waterfall, and it was Rebecca, Lilah's own daughter who had been taken from her at the age of fourteen, burning with a fever on the coldest night of the year.

"Rebecca! Oh, my own!" Forgetting the pain in her chest, Lilah stumbled across the field, tripping and tearing her ankles in the long grass whose edges were as sharp as knives. At the edge of the stream she fell on her knees, weeping, her frail arms flung wide in welcome. The figure raised her head from her task with a terrible laugh, and it was not Rebecca at all, and it was not long black hair that hung down her back, but garments as shapeless and murky as Fear itself. She raised her eyes to meet Lilah's, and they were black pits like the spaces between the stars in a face no more than bone, a face of bottomless sorrow and desolation that had been ancient when Lilah was yet a child. Her bony fingers loosed the white, clammy thing that she was washing, and she seized the old gipsy woman to her shrunken breast in an embrace of iron. Lilah felt the pain bubble up from her chest, filling her throat with its red, salty taste, and she fell down, deep down into the chasm of the other's gaze.

How long Lilah had lain there beside the stream she could not tell, but it was upon the Moon that she opened her eyes, riding high in a sea of tattered clouds. She felt warm, and the pain in her chest had gone. A deep peace was upon her then, and she lay quietly until the sound of hoof-beats, coming from the wood, aroused her. She sat up, and saw a magnificent stallion, pale and shining as the Moon herself, and a great star of midnight black on his forehead. And Nathaniel was leading him by the reins, tall and brown and supple as the larch, and on his back sat Jasper-John and Rebecca, with room for one more besides. "Come, my Lilah," said Nathaniel, "to the green and secret places, and learn the mysteries of Mother Earth. And we will dance in the circles of the Sun, and in the Moon's silver avenues, until the time comes for us to begin travelling once more." So Lilah got to her feet, as easily as if she had been a young maid, and behold, she was as naked and lithe, with long black hair free-flowing. She joined her loved ones upon the back of the great horse who shone like the stars, and together they galloped into the windy night, and what remained on the bank of the stream held no more meaning for Lilah than a heap of dry sticks and withered leaves.

Two Trees

2009-12-08T22:10:00.001Z

Timbertoes was a mighty old oak and Silvertoes was a graceful young birch. He grew on the edge of the forest and she grew near a lake. One day Wind said to Timbertoes “I gave you a wild night last night, old friend, I hope you stood up to it”.

“I think I lost a small top bough, but it was damaged anyway and that’s the first to go for years”.

Silvertoes butted in: “I only lost a few leaves, my branches are light enough to dance when you blow. I’m not old and heavy.”

Wind replied “Do you know you’re growing across the path?”

“What path?” But Silvertoes checked herself (you need to be careful how you talk to Wind). “We-ell, it doesn’t go anywhere”.

“Doesn’t it?” said Wind. “If I were you I’d grow the other way”.

“But then I couldn’t see myself in the lake”.

Wind sighed and went away.

One day a swineherd came with his pigs and kicked Silvertoes, complaining that she was blocking the path. His pigs grazed under Timbertoes and were thankful for the acorns. As the swineherd left he kicked Silvertoes again and grunted that, although she was a pretty tree, he didn’t like witches brooms.

On another occasion a stag butted silvertoes and said the same about not liking witches brooms. She complained to Timbertoes that other animals had done the same thing. But he told her “You are still just young enough to grow away from the path”. But she wouldn’t listen.

“I wouldn’t be able to see myself in the water” she said, “and if anyone else says anything about witches brooms, I’ll tell them about that ugly bush hidden in your branches”.

“They all know it’s there”, he replied “it’s been growing for 500 years”.

But Silvertoes was not listening and just admired herself in the water.

On another day a tiny wren settled on one of Silvertoes’ branches and whispered to her “Don’t you think you should move off the path a bit?”

“It doesn’t go anywhere” she insisted.

After a time a band of men came along the path and stopped right where Silvertoes was blocking the way. They made camp. Then, with a sharp axe, Silvertoes was cut down . Timbertoes shivered, but he knew why they had come. They built themselves a fire and settled down for the night. The next day they climbed Timbertoes and used a golden sickle to cut some of the bush with the white berries on it that he guarded in his branches. But they were reverent to him and departed with a blessing. When they had gone he sighed. Silvertoes was nothing but a pile of ash.

Collected in the Welsh borders by Ruth Tongue in 1909. It was said to have been passed down within the same family at least since c.1770. It does not contain any standard folk-take motifs so may be a specific local story rather than a local version of a generalized type as is usual.

The Trapped Moon

2009-11-29T21:47:00.003Z

LONG ago, in my grandmother's time, the Carland was all in bogs, great pools of black water, and creeping trickles of green water, and squishy mools which squirted when you stepped on them. Well, granny used to say how long before her time the Moon herself was once dead and buried in the marshes, and as she used to tell me, I'll tell you all about it.

The Moon up yonder shone and shone, just as she does now, and when she shone she lighted up the bog-pools, so that one could walk about almost as safe as in the day. But when she didn't shine, out came the Things that dwelt in the darkness and went about seeking to do evil and harm; Bogies and Crawling Horrors, all came out when the Moon didn't shine. Well, the Moon heard of this, and being kind and good - as she surely is, shining for us in the night instead of taking her natural rest - she was main troubled. 'I'll see for myself, I will,' said she, 'maybe it's not so bad as folks make out.' Sure enough, at the month's end down she stept, wrapped up in a black cloak, and a black hood over her shining hair. Straight she went to the bog edge and looked about her. Water here and water there; waving tussocks and trembling mools, and great black snags all twisted and bent. Before her all was dark - dark but for the glimmer of the stars in the pools, and the light that came from her own white feet, stealing out of her black cloak.

The Moon drew her cloak faster about and trembled, but she wouldn't go back without seeing all there was to be seen; so on she went, stepping as light as the wind in summer from tuft to tuft between the greedy gurgling water-holes. Just as she came near a big black pool her foot slipped and she was nigh tumbling in. She grabbed with both hands at a snag near by to steady herself with, but as she touched it, it twined itself round her wrists, like a pair of handcuffs, and gript her so that she couldn't move. She pulled and twisted and fought, but it was no good. She was fast, and must stay fast.

Presently as she stood trembling in the dark, wondering if help would come, she heard something calling in the distance, calling, calling, and then dying away with a sob, till the marshes were full of this pitiful crying sound; then she heard steps floundering along, squishing in the mud and slipping on the tufts, and through the darkness she saw a white face with great feared eyes. 'Twas a man strayed in the bogs. Mazed with fear, he struggled on towards the flickering light that looked like help and safety. And when the poor Moon saw that he was coming nigher and nigher to the deep hole, further and further from the path, she was so mad and so sorry that she struggled and fought and pulled harder than ever. And though she couldn't get loose, she twisted and turned, till her black hood fell back off her shining hair, and the beautiful light that came from it drove away the darkness.

Oh, but the man cried with joy to see the light again. And at once all evil things fled back into the dark corners, for they cannot abide the light. So he could see where he was, and where the path was, and how he could get out of the marsh. And he was in such haste to get away from the Quicks, and Bogles, and Things that dwelt there, that he scarce looked at the brave light that came from the beautiful shining hair, streaming out over the black cloak and falling to the water at his feet. And the Moon herself was so taken up with saving him, and with rejoicing that he was back on the right path, that she clean forgot that she needed help herself, and that she was held fast by the Black Snag.

So off he went; spent and gasping, and stumbling and sobbing with joy, flying for his life out of the terrible bogs. Then it came over the Moon she would like to go with him. So she pulled and fought as if she were mad, till she fell on her knees, spent with tugging, at the foot of the snag. And as she lay there, gasping for breath, the black hood fell forward over her head. So out went the blessed light and back came the darkness, with all its Evil Things, with a screech and a howl. They came crowding round her, mocking and snatching and beating; shrieking with rage and spite, and swearing and snarling, for they knew her for their old enemy, that drove them back into the corners, and kept them from working their wicked wills. 'Drat thee!' yelled the witch-bodies, 'thou'st spoiled our spells this year agone!'

'And us thou sent'st to brood in the corners!' howled the Bogles.

And all the Things joined in with a great 'Ho, ho!' till the very tussocks shook and the water gurgled. And they began again.

'We'll poison her - poison her!' shrieked the witches. And 'Ho-ho!' howled the Things again.'We'll smother her - smother her!' whispered the Crawling Horrors, and twined themselves round her knees. And 'Ho, ho!' mocked the rest of them.

And again they all shouted with spite and ill will. And the poor Moon crouched down, and wished she was dead and done with.

And they fought and squabbled what they should do with her, till a pale grey light began to come in the sky; and it drew nigh the dawning. And when they saw that, they were feared lest they shouldn't have time to work their will; and they caught hold of her, with horrid bony fingers, and laid her deep in the water at the foot of the snag. And the Bogles fetched a strange big stone and rolled it on top of her, to keep her from rising. And they told two of the Will-o-the-wykes to take turns in watching on the black snag, to see that she lay safe and still, and couldn't get out to spoil their sport.

And there lay the poor Moon, dead and buried in the bog, till someone would set her loose, and who'd know where to look for her?

Well, the days passed, and 'twas the time for the new moon's coming, and the folk put pennies in their pockets and straws in their caps so as to be ready for her, and looked about, for the Moon was a good friend to the marsh folk, and they were glad when the dark time was gone, and the paths were safe again, and the Evil Things were driven back by the blessed Light into the darkness and the water-holes.

But days and days passed, and the new Moon never came, and the nights were aye dark, and the Evil Things were worse than ever. And still the days went on, and the new Moon never came. Naturally the poor folk were strangely feared and mazed, and a lot of them went to the Wise Woman who dwelt in the old mill, and asked if so be she could find out where the Moon was gone.

'Well,' said she, after looking in the brewpot, and in the mirror, and in the Book, 'it be main queer, but I can't rightly tell ye what's happened to her. If ye hear of aught, come and tell me.' So they went their ways; and as days went by, and never a Moon came, naturally they talked - my word! I reckon they did talk! Their tongues wagged at home, and at the inn, and in the garth. But so came one day, as they sat on the great settle in the inn, a man from the far end of the bog lands was smoking and listening, when all at once he sat up and slapped his knee. 'My faicks!' says he, 'I'd clean forgot, but I reckon I kens where the Moon be!' and he told them of how he was lost in the bogs, and how, when he was nigh dead with fright, the light shone out, and he found the path and got home safe. So off they all went to the Wise Woman, and told her about it, and she looked long in the pot and the Book again, and then she nodded her head.

'It's dark still, childer, dark!' says she, 'and I can't rightly see, but do as I tell ye, and ye'll find out for yourselves. Go all of ye, just afore the night gathers, put a stone in your mouth, and take a hazel-twig in your hands, and say never a word till you're safe home again. Then walk on and fear not, far into the midst of the marsh, till ye find a coffin, a candle, and a cross. Then ye'll not be far from your Moon; look, and happen ye'll find her.'

So came the next night in the darklings, out they went all together, every man with a stone in his mouth, and a hazel-twig in his hand, and feeling, thou may'st reckon, feared and creepy. And they stumbled and stottered along the paths into the midst of the bogs; they saw naught, though they heard sighings and flutterings in their ears, and felt cold wet fingers touching them; but all at once, looking around for the coffin, the candle, and the cross, while they came nigh to the pool beside the great snag, where the Moon lay buried. And all at once they stopped, quaking and mazed and skeery, for there was the great stone, half in, half out of the water, for all the world like a strange big coffin; and at the head was the black snag, stretching out its two arms in a dark gruesome cross, and on it a tiddy light flickered, like a dying candle.

Then they went nigher, and took hold of the big stone, and shoved it up, and afterwards they said that for one tiddy minute they saw a strange and beautiful face looking up at them glad-like out of the black water; but the Light came so quick and so white and shining, that they stept back mazed with it, and the very next minute, when they could see again, there was the full Moon in the sky, bright and beautiful and kind as ever, shining and smiling down at them, and making the bogs and the paths as clear as day, and stealing into the very corners, as though she'd have driven the darkness and the Bogles clean away if she could.

From Folktales of the Lincolnshire Cars

The Well at the World’s End

2009-11-17T00:07:00.001Z

This story from the collection of Joseph Jacobs English Fairy Tales. (1890) from a source given as Leyden's edition of The Complaynt of Scotland, contains the interesting variant on the theme of the frog becoming a handsome prince in that his head has to be cut off for this to happen. There are other tales where the head (of an animal or a person) has to be cut off and put into a well in order for some transformation to take place (see discussion HERE).

*****

ONCE upon a time, and a very good time it was, though it wasn't in my time, nor in your time, nor anyone else's time, there was a girl whose mother had died, and her father married again. And her stepmother hated her because she was more beautiful than herself, and she was very cruel to her. She used to make her do all the servant's work, and never let her have any peace. At last, one day, the stepmother thought to get rid of her altogether; so she handed her a sieve and said to her: 'Go, fill it at the Well of the World's End and bring it home to me full, or woe betide you.' For she thought she would never be able to find the Well of the World' s End, and, if she did, how could she bring home a sieve full of water?

Well, the girl started off, and asked everyone she met to tell her where was the Well of the World's End. But nobody knew, and she didn't know what to do, when a queer little old woman, all bent double, told her where it was, and how she could get to it. So she did what the old woman told her, and at last arrived at the Well of the World's End. But when she dipped the sieve in the cold, cold water, it all ran out again. She tried and tried again, but every time it was the same; and at last she sat down and cried as if her heart would break.

Suddenly she heard a croaking voice, and she looked up and saw a great frog with goggle eyes looking at her and speaking to her.

'What's the matter, dearie?' it said.

'Oh, dear, oh dear,' she said, 'my stepmother has sent me all this long way to fill this sieve with water from the Well of the World's End, and I can't fill it no how at all.'

'Well,' said the frog, 'if you promise me to do whatever I bid you for a whole night long, I'll tell you how to fill it.'

So the girl agreed, and the frog said:

'Stop it with moss and daub it with clay,
And then it will carry the water away';

then it gave a hop, skip, and jump, and went flop into the Well of the World's End.

So the girl looked about for some moss, and lined the bottom of the sieve with it, and over that she put some clay, and then she dipped it once again into the Well of the World's End; and this time, the water didn't run out, and she turned to go away.

Just then the frog popped up its head out of the Well of the World's End, and said: 'Remember your promise.'

'All right,' said the girl; for thought she, 'What harm can a frog do me?'

So she went back to her stepmother, and brought the sieve full of water from the Well of the World's End. The stepmother was angry as angry, but she said nothing at all.

That very evening they heard something tap-tapping at the door low down, and a voice cried out:

'Open the door, my hinny, my heart,
Open the door, my own darling;
Mind you the words that you and I spoke,
Down in the meadow, at the World's End Well.'

'Whatever can that be?' cried out the stepmother, and the girl had to tell her about it, and what she had promised the frog.

'Girls must keep their promises,' said the stepmother. 'Go and open the door this instant.' For she was glad the girl would have to obey a nasty frog.

So the girl went and opened the door, and there was the frog from the Well of the World's End. And it hopped, and it hopped, and it jumped, till it reached the girl, and then it said:

'Lift me to your knee, my hinny, my heart;
Lift me to your knee, my own darling;
Remember the words you and I spake,
Down in the meadow, by the World's End Well.'

But the girl didn't like to, till her stepmother said: 'Lift it up this instant, you hussy! Girls must keep their promises!'

So at last she lifted the frog up on to her lap, and it lay there for a time, till at last it said:

'Give me some supper, my hinny, my heart,
Give me some supper, my darling;
Remember the words you and I spake,
In the meadow, by the Well of the World's End.'

Well, she didn't mind doing that, so she got it a bowl of milk and bread, and fed it well. And when the frog had finished, it said:

'Go with me to bed, my hinny, my heart,
Go with me to bed, my own darling;
Mind you the words you spake to me,
Down by the cold well, so weary.'

But that the girl wouldn't do, till her stepmother said: 'Do what you promised, girl; girls must keep their promises. Do what you're bid, or out you go, you and your froggie.'

So the girl took the frog with her to bed, and kept it as far away from her as she could. Well, just as the day was beginning to break what should the frog say but:

'Chop off my head, my hinny, my heart,
Chop off my head, my own darling;
Remember the promise you made to me,
Down by the cold well, so weary.'

At first the girl wouldn't, for she thought of what the frog had done for her at the Well of the World's End. But when the frog said the words over again she went and took an axe and chopped off its head, and lo! and behold, there stood before her a handsome young prince, who told her that he had been enchanted by a wicked magician, and he could never be unspelled till some girl would do his bidding for a whole night, and chop off his head at the end of it.

The stepmother was surprised indeed when she found the young prince instead of the nasty frog, and she wasn't best pleased, you may be sure, when the prince told her that he was going to marry her stepdaughter because she had unspelled him. But married they were, and went away to live in the castle of the king, his father, and all the stepmother had to console her was that it was all through her that her stepdaughter was married to a prince.

WINTERFALL

2009-11-07T19:21:00.002Z

Autumn bides her weary time till trees like setting suns have had

their evening splendour out and even misty mornings bring the joy

of rattling rusts and roses bristling in the breezes, sere like

the skins of bark beneath them.

Bright their hue in the sun's rich light

In gold & yellow & dun they're dight

But they keen in the wind's chill breath.

In a brief storm in a black night

One falls and is wan in the paling light

And the dun darkens to death.

...

Cold was the mire underfoot

And wet were the feet that trod

Thin was the cry she heard in the storm

And broken in the sod - her god.

Sorrows untold for her weary lord

Pierced her through with pain

And she gave him her gown of

Gold & brown and one of black she made.

Then the land was dark

As she cast it wide

And the bare hillside

Was chill and stark

As winter's grip

The spells unrhymed

That summer made;

Hoar frosts pinched

The sleeping seed

And the forest path led

On and on through barren dells

And misty slopes fell sheer away

And the dark road had

no ending

Cyhoeraeth

2009-11-01T14:11:00.000Z

The figure variously known as Kyhirraeth, Cyhoeraeth or Cyhyraeth is a banshee-like figure in the Welsh tradition. Here are two accounts of this spirit from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries:

That is a doleful disagreeable sound heard before the deaths of many, and most apt to be heard before foul weather: the voice resembles the groaning of sick persons who are to die; heard at first at a distance, then comes nearer, and at last near at hand; so that it is a three-fold warning of death – the king of terrors. It begins strong and louder than a sick man can make, the second cry is lower, but not less doleful, rather more so; the third yet lower and soft, like the groaning of a sick man, almost spent and dying; so that the person well remembering the voice, and coming to the sick man’s bed who is to die, shall hear his groans exactly alike, which is amazing evidence of the spirit’s foreknowledge. Sometimes when it cries very loud it bears a resemblance of one crying who is troubled with a stitch. If it meets any hindrance in the way it seems to groan louder.

told by Joshua Coslet to Edmund Jones (1702-1793)

There was a peculiar species of ghosts, denominated as Cyhoeraeth, and deemed the most horrible of supernatural beings. The following is a description of it. A being with dishevelled hair, long, black teeth, long lank withered arms; its shriek is described as having such an effect as literally to freeze the blood in the veins of those who heard it, and was never uttered except when the ghost came to a cross road, or went by some water, which (if female) she splashed with her hands making at the same time the most doleful sounds, and exclaiming ‘O! O! fy ngwr, fy ngwr’ (my husband, my husband) or (if male) ‘fy ngwraig, fy ngwraig’ (my wife, my wife) or ‘fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn bach’ (my child, my child, my little child’.

Cambrian Superstitions W, Chetwynd-Hayes (1831)

Goblin Combe

2009-10-25T22:21:00.000Z

There was a parcel of children picking primroses and one of them wandered off down into Goblin Combe. She were only a tot and didn’t know better. So she was lost and she cried till the tears ran down like rain and she threw herself down on the ground and her bunch of primroses struck a rock. All at once the rock opens and out comes the fairies to tend to her tears. Then they gave her a golden ball and led her safe home, on account of that she was carrying primroses.

It was the wonder of the village that she was brought home safe but the conjuror he got the notion that he could be going after a golden ball or two. So off he went with a bunch of primroses to Goblin Combe and he got to the rock not without a fright or two on the way and dashed the flowers against it. Well it wasn’t the right day, nor the right number of primroses, and he wasn’t no dear little soul either – so they took him!

Primroses, culver-keys and forget-me-nots, are all magic spring worts, but you have to have the right number in the bunch.

***

Collected by Ruth Tongue who heard the account from two old ladies who related it in chorus : Clevedon, Somerset 1945.

THE ASRAI

2009-10-14T00:02:00.004+01:00

A fisherman was out with his drag-net on the lake at the dark of the night. As the moon rose, he moved his boat into the shadows. His net grew heavy, and he had trouble to pull it in. When the full moon shone out he saw that he had caught an Asrai. It was a wonderfully beautiful, gentle creature to look at. He had heard old people say these fairies only came up from their cool, deep homes below the water once in a hundred years, to look at the moon, and to grow. As this one seemed about the size of a twelve year maid, the man could not guess how very old it must be.

He spoke to it, for it did not make him afraid, and it seemed to beg him to let it go, but its speech only sounded to him like the ripples among the lake-side sedges. The fisherman had half a mind to set it free, but he wanted to show it to his children, and then he began to think how the rich folk in the castle might like to show it in their fish-ponds, and would pay him well. So he hardened his heart, and began the long row homewards.

The Asrai got one arm out of the net, and pointed again and again to the waning moon, and then laid a hand on his arm - "like cool foam, the touch was," he said later. But it seemed that his human warmth hurt it, for it shrank away from him, and huddled down in the bottom of the boat, covering itself with its long green hair. He was afraid the light of day might be too strong for it, and covered it with wet rushes. The lake was long, and the sun had risen by the time he got to his own creek.

He drew the boat ashore, and lifted the rushes away from where the Asrai had lain. His net was empty, and a damp patch was all there was left of it. But the arm that it touched was icy cold all the rest of his life, and nothing would warm it.

Ruth L. Tongue in Forgotten Folk-Tales

The Shadows

2009-10-08T22:51:00.006+01:00

"We are the Shadows" repeated the Shadow solemnly.

"We do not often appear to men."

"Ah" said the King.

"We do not belong to the sunshine at all. We go through it unseen, and only by passing chill, do men recognise an unknown presence."

"Ah" said the King again.

"It is only in the twilight of the fire, or when one man or woman is alone with a single candle, or when any number of people are all feeling the same thing at once, making them one, that we show ourselves, and the truth of things."

"Can that be true that loves the night?" said the King

"The darkness is the nurse of light." answered the Shadow

"Can that be true which mocks at forms?" said the King

"Truth rides abroad in shapeless storms." answered the Shadow.

George Macdonald 'The Shadows' from The Fantastic Imagination

Benevolent and Malevolent Trees

2009-09-30T21:24:00.006+01:00

Stories about benevolent and malevolent trees are widespread in British folklore.
Here's one from Derbyshire:

A man has to make a journey late at night along a stretch of road which crosses a river at a place where the torrent is particularly fast and rocky. He is afraid because this stretch of road is haunted by a malevolent ash tree known as 'Crooker' who causes people to drown in the torrent. So although the way is dark, it is important to get to the bridge before moonrise when Crooker become active. But more important still is to gain the protection of a benevolent tree. This the traveller does and the beech tree appears to him in the form of three separate women dressed in green and each of them gives him a posy of flowers "for Crooker". He is also given a beech nut for a talisman.

Once on the road he moves through the darkness as fast as he can go but sees the Moon rising before he has reached the bridge. As he gets close the shadow of a crooked branch begins to move towards him threateningly, so he offers one of the posies of flowers which is taken a thrown into the river. Further on the crooked shadow looms up before him so he offers the second posy and this too is cast into the river. Almost on the bridge the enormous shadow with branches like clasping arms bars the way. He offers the final posy and it is cast into the river. Can he now pass onto the bridge? He takes the beech nut and thinks of the rustling leaves of the beech tree. The shadow withdraws and he steps onto the bridge, passing safely across it.

***

These stories of animated trees with a variety of dispositions towards humans might be compared to the dryads of Greek mythology, though these are often represented as spirits inhabiting the tree which takes human form. Here, the tree itself may appear in human guise to humans but remains a tree. It is said that the greeks had a tendency to personify such spirits while the Romans were more likely to think of them as 'presences' of indeterminate form. But the British folklore record does very much indicate the attribution of both animation and particular intentions to the trees themselves.

The Apple Tree Man

2009-09-21T23:05:00.004+01:00

There is a place where it was once the custom for the youngest rather than the oldest son to inherit the family wealth. In one family where this happened the youngest son had a particular dislike for the oldest son, so when he came to share out the inheritance all the oldest got was “an old dunk [donkey] and an ox that had gone to natomy [like a skeleton]” together with an old ruined cottage with three apple trees that had belonged to their grandpa. For this he had to pay rent. He didn’t grumble but cut all the grass along the lane to feed the donkey and the ox and he rubbed the ox with herbs to revive him. The he put the two animals into the orchard of three apple trees, and the trees flourished too.

Just before the rent was due on Midwinter Day his brother came to him and made him an offer to reduce the rent by sixpence if he could come and listen to the animals on Midwinter Night. He had heard that animals could talk to each other at this time and he hoped they might reveal the whereabouts of some treasure that had been buried in the area.

On Midwinter Day the older brother gave the animals some extra feed and hung up some holly in the barn. Then he took the last of his cider, mulled it by the embers and took it to give to the trees. When he had done this, the Apple Tree Man spoke to him, telling him to look under the exposed roots of one of the trees. There he found a box full of gold. “Tis yours”, the Apple Tree man said. “Put it away safe and tell no-one”.

When the older brother came out at midnight sure enough he heard the donkey and the ox speaking. The donkey said : “You know this gurt, greedy fool that’s listening to us – he wants to know where the treasure is”.

And the ox replied: “But he won’t never get it, cos someone else has took it already”.

***

Adapted from a dialect version in Katherine Briggs A Dictionary of British Folk Tales.

The obvious interest here is the Apple Tree Man, but I wonder if the reference to the inheritance by the youngest rather than the oldest son is something that just happens to have got mixed up with this tale, or whether it has some other significance?

The Forbidden Wood

2009-09-07T22:45:00.004+01:00

'The Naiad' John Waterhouse

"I entered a forbidden wood, and the Nymphae and half-goat god bolted from my sight. If any knife has robbed a grove of a shady bough to give ailing sheep a basket of leaves: forgive my offence. Do not fault me for sheltering my flock from the hail in a rustic shrine, nor harm me for disturbing the pools. Pardon, Nymphae, trampling hooves for muddying your stream. Goddess, placate for us the Springs and Fountain Spirits [Naiades], placate the gods dispersed through every grove. Keep from our sight the Dryades and Diana’s bath and Faunus lying in the fields at noon.” - Ovid, Fasti 4.751

Phantastes

2009-09-01T21:45:00.005+01:00

George MacDonald's Phantastes, first published in 1858, is a classic text that influenced C. S Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and others in the succeeding 20th century.

Here's another brief quotation from this novel :

As through the hard rock go the branching silver veins; as into the solid land run the creeks and gulfs from the unresting sea; as the lights and influences of the upper worlds sink silently through the earth's atmosphere; so doth Faerie invade the world of men, and sometimes startle the common eye with an association as of cause and effect, when between the two no connecting links can be traced.

The Protecting Beech Tree

2009-08-25T23:07:00.004+01:00

In George MacDonald's 'faerie romance' Phantastes, the protaganist is being attacked in a forest by an ash tree with evil intent. He is saved by a beech tree who not only protects him but expresses feelings of fondness towards him. She appears to him as a woman, but when he asks her "Why do you call yourself a beech tree?" She replies, "Because I am one". She puts her arms around him and kisses him "with the sweetest kiss of winds and odours". The whole scene has the sacred aura of a communion about it. To maintain her protection she says he must be bound with some of her hair:

"I cannot tell you more. But now I must tie some of my hair about you, and then the Ash will not touch you. Here, cut some off. You men have strange cutting things about you."

She shook her long hair loose over me, never moving her arms.

"I cannot cut your beautiful hair. It would be a shame."

"Not cut my hair! It will have grown long enough before any is wanted again in this wild forest. Perhaps it may never be of any use again - not till I am a woman." And she sighed.

As gently as I could, I cut with a knife a long tress of flowing, dark hair, she hanging her beautiful head over me. When I had finished, she shuddered and breathed deep, as one does when an acute pain, steadfastly endured without sign of suffering, is at length relaxed. She then took the hair and tied it round me, singing a strange, sweet song, which I could not understand, but which left in me a feeling like this -

"I saw thee ne'er before;

I see thee never more;

But love, and help, and pain, beautiful one,

Have made thee mine, till all my years are done."

I cannot put more of it into words. She closed her arms about me again, and went on singing. The rain in the leaves, and a light wind that had arisen, kept her song company. I was wrapt in a trance of still delight. It told me the secret of the woods, and the flowers, and the birds. At one time I felt as if I was wandering in childhood through sunny spring forests, over carpets of primroses, anemones, and little white starry things - I had almost said creatures, and finding new wonderful flowers at every turn. At another, I lay half dreaming in the hot summer noon, with a book of old tales beside me, beneath a great beech; or, in autumn, grew sad because I trod on the leaves that had sheltered me, and received their last blessing in the sweet odours of decay; or, in a winter evening, frozen still, looked up, as I went home to a warm fireside, through the netted boughs and twigs to the cold, snowy moon, with her opal zone around her. At last I had fallen asleep; for I know nothing more that passed till I found myself lying under a superb beech-tree, in the clear light of the morning, just before sunrise. Around me was a girdle of fresh beech-leaves. Alas! I brought nothing with me out of Fairy Land, but memories -memories. The great boughs of the beech hung drooping around me. At my head rose its smooth stem, with its great sweeps of curving surface that swelled like undeveloped limbs. The leaves and branches above kept on the song which had sung me asleep; only now, to my mind, it sounded like a farewell and a speedwell. I sat a long time, unwilling to go; but my unfinished story urged me on. I must act and wander. With the sun well risen, I rose, and put my arms as far as they would reach around the beech-tree, and kissed it, and said good-bye. A trembling went through the leaves; a few of the last drops of the night's rain fell from off them at my feet; and as I walked slowly away, I seemed to hear in a whisper once more the words: "I may love him, I may love him; for he is a man, and I am only a beech-tree."

RIVERS

2009-08-19T22:23:00.003+01:00

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are examples of rivers actively participating in the resistance to invasion of a particular land. For instance in the Irish epic The Táin ,Ulster is being attacked by invaders from Connacht. We are told that

... the river Cronn rose up against them to the height of the treetops and they had to pass the night by the edge of the water. In the morning Medb ordered some of her followers across it. The famous warrior Ualu tried it. To cross the river he shouldered a big flagstone so that the water wouldn't force him backward. But the river overwhelmed him, stone and all, and he drowned.

[Cúchulainn continued to harass the army from across the river]

So they went along the river Cronn until they reached its source. They were crossing between the spring and the mountain summit when Medb called them back ....

Next day they travelled to the river Colptha. Recklessly they tried a crossing, but it too rose against them and bore off a hundred of their charioteers towards the sea. ...

After this they went across Glen Gatlaig, but the river Gatlaig rose up against them also.

(quotations from Thomas Kinsella's translation)

The Coming of the Gael

2009-08-14T22:57:00.004+01:00

And when they were hindered from land there by enchantments, they went sailing along the coast until they were at last able to make a landing at Inver Sceine .....

And there they were met by a queen of the Tuatha de Danaan, and a train of beautiful women attending on her, and her Druids and wise men following her. Amergin, one of the sons of Miled, spoke to her then, and asked her name, and she said it was Banba, wife of Mac Cuill, Son of the Hazel.

The went on then till they came to Slieve Eibhline, and there another queen of the Tuatha de Danaan met them, and her women and her Druids after her , and they asked her name, and she said it was Fodhla, wife of Mac Cecht, Son of the Plough.

They went on then till they came to the hill of Uisnech, and there they saw another woman coming towards them. And there was a wonder on them while they were looking at her, for in one moment she would be a wide-eyed most beautiful queen, and in another she would be a sharp-beaked, grey-white crow. She came on the where Eremon, one of the sons of Miled, was, and sat down before him, and he asked her who was she, and she said: "I am Eriu, wife of Mac Greine, Son of the Sun."

And the names of those queens were often given to Ireland in the after time.

[.....]

But as to the Tuatha de Danaan, after they were beaten, they would not go under the sway of the sons of Miled, but they went away by themselves. And because Mananaan mac Lir understood all enchantments, they left it to him to find places for them where they would be safe from their enemies. So he chose out the most beautiful of the hills and valleys of Ireland for them to settle in; and he put hidden walls about them, that no man could see through, but they themselves could see through them and pass through them.

And he made of Feast of Age for them, and what they drank was the ale of Goibniu the Smith, that kept whoever tasted it from age and from sickness and from death. And for food at the feast he gave them his own swine, that though they were killed and eaten one day, would be alive and fit for eating again the next day, and that would go on in that way for ever.

Would you Venture into this Place?

2009-08-07T11:26:00.012+01:00

Here's a classic tale of faery from the Archive:

THE INN : Tony Kelly

Sometimes I could find my way and more often I couldn't, and I've a mind the magic was in it. I was a road like, if it were half as long as it was, then sure it wouldn't have been long enough at all, but then I didn't make it myself, or if I did the memory of it runs on longer legs than mine. And besides, if it were not as long, then you'll know without me telling you that it wouldn't have got from where it was coming to where it was going at all. So it was as long as it was entirely, and it's as long as it is, and I'll not be picking a fight with you if you'll say it'll be as long as it'll be. So now you'll be knowing about this road and I'll not be needing to tell you more about it except that it was Summer and the briars were in the hedges and the wild roses were all blooming in among the briars, which was very natural, for where else in the all the world would the wild roses be blooming on a Summer's day but in among the briars? And it's thirsty I was, like the thirst that gets up at you when you're on the road that's as long as it is and the wild roses are blooming in among the briars and the Summer's laughing his head off up there in the haze where the road's boiling in the heat. And it's into the gateway I turned, with the roses growing over the arch and the bees all a buzzing in the air and ... By the Hallowed Horns! And the Mazy Dance! Isn't it the same gate that I never can find when I've a mind to find it? So I go up to the door and there's the Barman and "A Merry Midsummer to you" he says, and I sit myself down at the table by the open window where the wild roses are looking in, and there are two other men sitting at the table, and another besides, and you'll be after saying that that's three men, and I'll be after saying it's right you are. But if I wasn't right, you'd be no more right than I was, so we wouldn't be starting an argument about that. But I was thinking, like you might be thinking yourself if you were there in my shoes and I had another pair with me at the time, that the other one might have been a wizard for all he was a man if he were a man at all, and if he was not a man, then it wasn't for all he was a man that he was a wizard. He was one of those story tellers, with rhymes and rhythms, and his eyes were twinkling, and there were the scents of the roses, and in the rise and the fall of his dark brown voice the tales wove all in and about themselves like woodbine round the rafters and there was the chirrup of the grasshopper coming in at the window and the grasses sighed of Summer but made never a sound till he stopped awhile for the green and the brown. Like the woodbine his words were winding, heady as the wood scents, thick as the briars, and the Barman said, "You'll be staying the night?" and the Moon said I would. Faith! He had talked the day away! So the three of us went to bed in the long room, and if you'll be asking why it wasn't the four of us, I'll be saying I might be asking you for all the answer I can give to that, but it was dreams all the night of the summer woods and the wild roses and the scents that merge and fade and grow and gather and swell and drift where the pollen goes, where the spore cloud flows, where the birdsong goes when you can't hear it anymore and where the wind comes from. And I got up in a hurry in the morning and had a hearty breakfast quicker than a man ought to eat a good breakfast and I made off along the road. And didn't I find it was the wrong man that had got up and it wasn't myself at all? So I turned round and went back to the inn, and this time I made sure I got out of the right bed.

Well, as I've told you before, when I'm looking for the place I never can find it, but I found it another time when I wasn't looking for it. Yule it was, and a raw wind coming down the road and the snow was just starting to come down and bits of it sticking in the hedges, and I'm thinking I must have opened my mouth when the wind went by and swallowed him because he seems to be rolling about in my belly, and there's wet snow above my eyebrows and running down behind my ears and into my collar and ... Sweet Mabh! ... There I was at the gate again! Now I've heard tell that if you go into the inn in Midwinter, it'll not be the wizard you'll see but the old witch. But I go into the inn and the Barman says "A Merry Yule to you" and I sit myself down at the table and there's a candle lit on it, and sure as I'm telling you this now, there's an old woman sitting there by the candle and the two men sitting there at the table alongside her. But I've heard more than I've a mind for of her dark tales and her story craft, and it's said, and I'll not say I doubt it, that if you hear the tales that she'll tell, it'll not be a wizard's trick she'll put on you. Never a thing! By the Black Night and the Ivy's Green! If she catch you with her runes, you'll never remember that it was another man you were before you set foot in the inn, and you'll never remember she told you a tale at all. So I didn't let her tell me a thing at all, at all.

Faery Ground

2009-07-17T22:16:00.005+01:00

Here is a quote from Mary Webb's novel Armour Wherein He Trusted:

"I come from Cymru, sir, and my home is in the waste; and my lineage is elf-lineage, and for our sign, it is a churn-owl with a kingly crown upon his head."

"Where, then, is this waste situate," asked the ascheater...

"Sir," she made answer, "it lies between Salop and Radnor. It lies also between life and death. It is betwixt and between all things."

"Is it in Doom Book?"

"Nay my lord, for it is in neither county. Nor is it in any hundred, nor does it pay gold."

"How comes that?"

"Why, lord, it is faery ground and you cannot measure it nor go round it, for though it is only a narrow piece, times, of the width of three horses head and tail, yet, times, it will widen to eternity and yet again it will shrink to a knife-edge."

FERN LORE

2009-07-07T00:01:00.005+01:00

Lady Fern (Asplenium felix-femina)

In Shakespeare’s Henry IV pt 1, one of the characters says “We have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible”. We may not, in context, be meant to take this seriously as the response from his listener is that they are “more beholden to the night” for their invisibility. So it is not clear whether or not Shakespeare realised that ferns do not have seeds but spores, a much older method of plant reproduction. Being well-versed in plant lore, Shakespeare clearly did know that fern ‘seed’ was hard to spot. It was believed that only at Midsummer could it be gathered to confer invisibility. If we allow a looseness of usage between ‘seed’ and ‘spore’ (consider “the crow flies to the rooky wood” in Macbeth) why would it be ferns, in particular, that could make someone invisible?

Is it their very liminality, not being flowering plants but belonging to a much more ancient remnant of the green world? If so, the lack of precision in the nomenclature in the scientific sense is compensated for in the recognition of their nature in the logical half-step that gets you into a faërie ring. If Bracken growing in swathes on a hillside is prominent enough and Lady Fern in a woodland glade more suggestive of enchantment, there are many other species that do not obviously reveal themselves as ferns at all. You could, for instance, walk past Adder’s Tongue Fern in a tract of open ground, growing among grasses and flowers and not see it at all. This fern, certainly, is good at making itself invisible.

And its cousin the Moonwort might be passed by on an open heath or on downland without being seen nestling in a hollow or inconspicuous by the side of a winding path. Alchemically it was supposed to be an agent in converting mercury to silver. There is much lore about faërie people not tolerating iron and that quality is also ascribed to this fern. It was said that it could open locks. It was also said that a horse stepping on it would lose its shoe : ‘Shoeless Horse’ and ‘Unshoo the Horse’ are recorded as local names for the fern. Culpepper in his Herball (1652) relates the story of thirty of the Earl of Essex’s horses being unshoed because of Moonwort and Du Bartas, in his Divine Weekes (1598) refers also to the unshoeing of horses and adds:

O Moonwort! tell us where thou hids’t the smith,

Hammer and pincers, though unshod’st them with?

(trans Joshua Sylvester (1604)

Lore apart, to see one of these is a special experience.
Transformative.
It is faërie silver.

Adders Tongue Fern ( Ophioglossum vulgatum)

Moonwort (Botrychium lunaria)

The Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach

2009-06-28T23:15:00.006+01:00

Llyn y Fan Fach

Here is the story of the Lady of the Lake of Llyn y Fan Fach as related by John Rhŷs in Celtic Folklore, published in 1901.

There lived at Blaensawdde near Llanddeusant, Carmarthenshire, a widowed woman who had an only son to bring up. She sent a portion of her cattle to graze on the adjoining Black Mountain, and their most favourite place was near the small lake called Llyn y Fan Fach, on the north-western side of the Carmarthenshire Fans.

The son was generally sent by his mother to look after the cattle on the mountain. One day, along the margin of the lake, to his great astonishment, he beheld, sitting on the unruffled surface of the water, a lady; one of the most beautiful creatures that mortal eyes ever beheld, her hair flowed gracefully in ringlets over her shoulders, the tresses of which she arranged with a comb, whilst the glassy surface of her watery couch served for the purpose of a mirror, reflecting back her own image. Suddenly she beheld the young man standing on the brink of the lake, with his eyes riveted on her, and unconsciously offering to herself the provision of barley bread and cheese with which he had been provided when he left his home.

Bewildered by a feeling of love and admiration for the object before him, he continued to hold out his hand towards the lady, who imperceptibly glided near to him, but gently refused the offer of his provisions. He attempted to touch her, but she eluded his grasp, saying--

Cras dy fara; Nid hawdd fy nala.

Hard baked is thy bread! 'Tis not easy to catch me

and immediately dived under the water and disappeared, leaving the love-stricken youth to return home, a prey to disappointment and regret that he had been unable to make further acquaintance with one, in comparison with whom the whole of the fair maidens of Llanddeusant and Myddfai whom he had ever seen were as nothing.

On his return home the young man communicated to his mother the extraordinary vision he had beheld. She advised him to take some unbaked dough or "toes" the next time in his pocket, as there must have been some spell connected with the hard-baked bread, or "Bara cras," which prevented his catching the lady.

Next morning, before the sun had gilded with its rays the peaks of the Fans, the young man was at the lake, not for the purpose of looking after his mother's cattle, but seeking for the same enchanting vision he had witnessed the day before; but all in vain did he anxiously strain his eyeballs and glance over the surface of the lake, as only the ripples occasioned by a stiff breeze met his view, and a cloud hung heavily on the summit of the Fan, which imparted an additional gloom to his already distracted mind.

Hours passed on, the wind was hushed, and the clouds which had enveloped the mountain had vanished into thin air before the powerful beams of the sun, when the youth was startled by seeing some of his mother's cattle on the precipitous side of the acclivity, nearly on the opposite side of the lake. His duty impelled him to attempt to rescue them from their perilous position, for which purpose he was hastening away, when, to his inexpressible delight, the object of his search again appeared to him as before, and seemed much more beautiful than when he first beheld her. His hand was again held out to her, full of unbaked bread, which he offered with an urgent proffer of his heart also, and vows of eternal attachment. All of which were refused by her, saying-

Llaith dy fara!  Ti ni fynna'.

Unbaked is thy bread!  I will not have thee

But the smiles that played upon her features as the lady vanished beneath the waters raised within the young man a hope that forbade him to despair by her refusal of him, and the recollection of which cheered him on his way home. His aged parent was made acquainted with his ill-success, and she suggested that his bread should next time be but slightly baked, as most likely to please the mysterious being of whom he had become enamoured.

Impelled by an irresistible feeling, the youth left his mother's house early next morning, and with rapid steps he passed over the mountain. He was soon near the margin of the lake, and with all the impatience of an ardent lover did he wait with a feverish anxiety for the reappearance of the mysterious lady.

The freshness of the early morning had disappeared before the sultry rays of the noon-day sun, which in its turn was fast verging towards the west as the evening was dying away and making room for the shades of night, and hope had well-nigh abated of beholding once more the Lady of the Lake. The young man cast a sad and last farewell look over the waters, and, to his astonishment, beheld several cows walking along its surface. The sight of these animals caused hope to revive that they would be followed by another object far more pleasing; nor was he disappointed, for the maiden reappeared, and to his enraptured sight, even lovelier than ever. She approached the land, and he rushed to meet her in the water. A smile encouraged him to seize her hand; neither did she refuse the moderately baked bread he offered her; and after some persuasion she consented to become his bride, on condition that they should only live together until she received from him three blows without a cause,

Tri ergyá diachos.   Three causeless blows.

And if he ever should happen to strike her three such blows she would leave him forever. To such conditions he readily consented, and would have consented to any other stipulation, had it been proposed, as he was only intent on then securing such a lovely creature for his wife.

Thus the Lady of the Lake engaged to become the young man's wife, and having loosed her hand for a moment she darted away and dived into the lake. His chagrin and grief were such that he determined to cast himself headlong into the deepest water, so as to end his life in the element that had contained in its unfathomed, depths the only one for whom he cared to live on earth. As he was on the point of committing this rash act, there emerged out of the lake two most beautiful ladies, accompanied by a hoary-headed man of noble mien and extraordinary stature, but having otherwise all the force and strength of youth. This man addressed the almost bewildered youth in accents calculated to soothe his troubled mind, saying that as he proposed to marry one of his daughters, he consented to the union, provided the young man could distinguish which of the two ladies before him was the object of his affections. This was no easy task, as the maidens were such perfect counterparts of each other that it seemed quite impossible for him to choose his bride, and if perchance he fixed upon the wrong one all would be forever lost.

Whilst the young man narrowly scanned the two ladies, he could not perceive the least difference betwixt the two, and was almost giving up the task in despair, when one of them thrust her foot a slight degree forward. The motion, simple as it was, did not escape the observation of the youth, and he discovered a trifling variation in the mode with which their sandals were tied. This at once put an end to the dilemma, for he, who had on previous occasions been so taken up with the general appearance of the Lady of the Lake, had also noticed the beauty of her feet and ankles, and on now recognizing the peculiarity of her shoe-tie he boldly took hold of her hand.

"Thou hast chosen rightly," said her father; "be to her a kind and faithful husband, and I will give her, as a dowry, as many sheep, cattle, goats, and horses as she can count of each without heaving or drawing in her breath. But remember, that if you prove unkind to her at any time, and strike her three times without a cause, she shall return to me, and shall bring all her stock back with her."

Such was the verbal marriage settlement, to which the young man gladly assented, and his bride was desired to count the number of sheep she was to have. She immediately adopted the mode of counting by fives, thus:--One, two, three, four, five -- One, two, three, four, five; as many times as possible in rapid succession, till her breath was exhausted. The same process of reckoning had to determine the number of goats, cattle, and horses respectively; and in an instant the full number of each came out of the lake when called upon by the father.

The young couple were then married, by what ceremony was not stated, and afterwards went to reside at a farm called Esgair Llaethdy, somewhat more than a mile from the village of Myddfai, where they lived in prosperity and happiness for several years, and became the parents of three sons, who were beautiful children.

Once upon a time there was a christening to take place in the neighbourhood, to which the parents were specially invited. When the day arrived the wife appeared very reluctant to attend the christening, alleging that the distance was too great for her to walk. Her husband told her to fetch one of the horses which were grazing in an adjoining field. "I will," said she, "if you will bring me my gloves which I left in our house." He went to the house and returned with the gloves, and finding that she had not gone for the horse jocularly slapped her shoulder with one of them, saying, "go! go!", when she reminded him of the understanding upon which she consented to marry him:-That he was not to strike her without a cause; and warned him to be more cautious for the future.

On another occasion, when they were together at a wedding, in the midst of the mirth and hilarity of the assembled guests, who had gathered together from all the surrounding country, she burst into tears and sobbed most piteously. Her husband touched her on her shoulder and inquired the cause of her weeping: she said, "Now people are entering into trouble, and your troubles are likely to commence, as you have the second time stricken me without a cause."

Years passed on, and their children had grown up, and were particularly clever young men. In the midst of so many worldly blessings at home the husband almost forgot that there remained only one causeless blow to be given to destroy the whole of his prosperity. Still he was watchful lest any trivial occurrence should take place which his wife must regard as a breach of their marriage contract. She told him, as her affection for him was unabated, to be careful that he would not, through some inadvertence, give the last and only blow, which, by an unalterable destiny, over which she had no control, would separate them for ever.

It, however, so happened that one day they were together at a funeral, where, in the midst of the mourning and grief at the house of the deceased, she appeared in the highest and gayest spirits, and indulged in immoderate fits of laughter, which so shocked her husband that he touched her, saying, "Hush! hush! don't laugh." She said that she laughed "because people when they die go out of trouble," and, rising up, she went out of the house, saying, "The last blow has been struck, our marriage contract is broken, and at an end! Farewell!" Then she started off towards Esgair Llaethdy, where she called her cattle and other stock together, each by name. The cattle she called thus:--

Mu wlfrech, Moelfrech, Mu olfrech, Gwynfrech, Pedair cae tonn-frech, Yr hen wynebwen. A'r las Geigen, Gyda'r Tarw Gwyn O lys y Brenin;  A'r llo du bach,  Syll ar y bach, Dere dithau, yn iach adre!

Brindled cow, white speckled, Spotted cow, bold freckled, The four field sward mottled, The old white-faced, And the grey Geingen, With the white Bull, From the court of the King;  And the little black calf  Tho' suspended on the hook, Come thou also, quite well home!

They all immediately obeyed the summons of their mistress. The "little black calf," although it had been slaughtered, became alive again, and walked off with the rest of the stock at the command of the lady. This happened in the spring of the year, and there were four oxen ploughing in one of the fields; to these she cried:--

Pedwar eidion glas /Sydd ar y maes, /Deuwch chwithau /Yn iach adre!

The four grey oxen, /That are on the field, /Come you also  /Quite well home!

Away the whole of the live stock went with the Lady across Myddfai Mountain, towards the lake from whence they came, a distance of above six miles, where they disappeared beneath its waters, leaving no trace behind except a well-marked furrow, which was made by the plough the oxen drew after them into the lake, and which remains to this day as a testimony to the truth of this story.

What became of the affrighted ploughman--whether he was left on the field when the oxen set off, or whether he followed them to the lake, has not been handed down to tradition; neither has the fate of the disconsolate and half-ruined husband been kept in remembrance. But of the sons it is stated that they often wandered about the lake and its vicinity, hoping that their mother might be permitted to visit the face of the earth once more, as they had been apprised of her mysterious origin, her first appearance to their father, and the untoward circumstances which so unhappily deprived them of her maternal care.

In one of their rambles, at a place near Dôl Howel, at the Mountain Gate, still called "Llidiad y Meddygon," The Physicians' Gate, the mother appeared suddenly, and accosted her eldest son, whose name was Rhiwallon, and told him that his mission on earth was to be a benefactor to mankind by relieving them from pain and misery, through healing all manner of their diseases; for which purpose she furnished him with a bag full of medical prescriptions and instructions for the preservation of health. That by strict attention thereto he and his family would become for many generations the most skilful physicians in the country. Then, promising to meet him when her counsel was most needed, she vanished. But on several occasions she met her sons near the banks of the lake, and once she even accompanied them on their return home as far as a place still called "Pant-y-Meddygon," The dingle of the Physicians, where she pointed out to them the various plants and herbs which grew in the dingle, and revealed to them their medicinal qualities or virtues; and the knowledge she imparted to them.

Midsummer Flower Lore

2009-06-17T21:59:00.008+01:00

A Pagan Movement Ethos Group post from June 1982:

Milkwort (Polygala vulgaris)

As the days lengthen to the heat of Midsummer and fields fill with flowers so the green of the pasture meadows has given way to a glittering of yellow buttercups. Both these and spearworts have made the grass a green background to their bright display. I stand on a heath above the yellow fields and see the Sun shine on a far bay and the sea appears as a jewel in the cup of the green hills and the grey town. The boggy ground up here has a dry crust on it now, but there's bog cotton on it nonetheless, with its fluffy cotton-wool head, and marsh pennywort leaves lie dark green on the dried mat of sphagnum moss. Out of the bog proper, in the wet meadow, there's lousewort with its purple flowers lying close to the ground seeking shelter from the Sun. On the hedgebank among the heather and the gorse I find milkwort too, a strange flower this with an inner tube and outer petals all forming a single flower. The outer petals stick out as the flower opens, like wings from the base of the tiny inner tube. All this is difficult to make out as the plant is only a few inches high. The colour varies too. These are all pale blue, but further down the bank are some with dark blue outer petals (sepals?) and a white inner part. The outer part will later take the appearance of sepals proper when they turn green as the fruit ripens. The herbalists used to prescribe this plant for nursing mothers to increase their milk supply. In Ireland it is known as fairy soap, the idea being that fairies made a lather from the roots.
After an absorbing hour or so on the hedge bank I cross the fields to the wood which I came to see. There are stretches of this wood running here and there from the heath down to the sand dunes by the sea. They are the remains of an ancient forest long since cleared for farmland. The trees which are left - mostly oaks - are old, and there are other things which are old here too. You can feel it in the cool shade of the canopy: a green magic that only a great age seems to bring. I walk the woodland path admiring the ferns, noting in particular the way the male ferns stand up in circular rosettes from the woodland floor. Then I see something unfamiliar. A fern to be sure, but what is it? I stop. Admire the perfect form of it. The soft green and unfamiliar shape - a bit like a polypody, a bit like a male fern - hold me there spellbound for a while. Then I must decide. It is either a beech fern or an oak fern, and only later after consulting my book can I finally conclude that it is the former. But still I must go back to make sure. Further on I come to a place were the fields fall down to the sea on one side and the trees clothe the sides of a deep gorge on the other. By the field's edge there is cow wheat growing; just inside the wood there's creeping jenny, a flower whose deep yellow petals have always held a fascination for me. This is not the yellow glitter of the buttercup fields, or the bright happy yellow of ragwort, or even the golden richness of a dandelion, but a dark mysterious yellow that somehow holds the secrets of a woodland summer in its five pointed petals. Such secrets now are whispered all around me. I'm standing by the tree that I came to see. An old, lichened wild service tree growing on the very edge of the steep slope of the gorge. But there are suckers growing on the flatter ground of the field from beneath the bracken which forms a barrier between the grass and the trees. This old wild service tree, with its fragile offspring, may be the only one in the county. They are usually only found in very old woodland. In coming to see it I have seen so much more and the afternoon has passed to evening. The Sun now is slanting low over the green hills to the sea beyond. All is still after the long day. Fields as rich as butter darken their shades of green as the yellow light deepens to the cool of night. Already the Moon pales to whiteness in the clear sky. Soon the night is all blue and silver. Fair Earth, so glad I am to love you like this. So glad I am to love you.

Creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia)

ELIDOR

2009-06-09T21:47:00.007+01:00

The story of Elidorus was related by Giraldus Cambrensis in his Journey Through Wales (1191). It has been retold many times in folk or faërie story format. Here is Gerald’s account:

Elidorus, when a youth of twelve years, and learning his letters, in order to avoid the discipline and frequent stripes inflicted on him ran away, and concealed himself under the hollow bank of a river. After fasting in that situation for two days, two little men of pigmy stature appeared to him, saying, "If you will come with us, we will lead you into a country full of delights and sports. Assenting and rising up, he followed his guides through a path, at first subterraneous and dark, into a most beautiful country, adorned with rivers and meadows, woods and plains, but obscure, and not illuminated with the full light of the sun. All the days were cloudy, and the nights extremely dark, on account of the absence of the moon and stars. The boy was brought before the king, and introduced to him in the presence of the court; who, having examined him for a long time, delivered him to his son, who was then a boy. These men were of the smallest stature, but very well proportioned in their make; they were all of a fair complexion, with luxuriant hair falling over their shoulders like that of women. They had horses and greyhounds adapted to their size. They neither ate flesh nor fish, but lived on a diet of milk with saffron. They never took an oath, for they detested nothing so much as lies. As often as they returned from our upper hemisphere, they reprobated our ambition, infidelities, and inconstancies; they had no form of public worship, being strict lovers, as it seemed, of truth. The boy frequently returned to our hemisphere, sometimes by the way he had first gone, sometimes by another: at first in company with other persons, and afterwards alone, and made himself known only to his mother, declaring to her the manners, nature, and state of that people. Being desired by her to bring a present of gold, with which that region abounded, he stole, while at play with the king's son, the golden ball with which he used to divert himself, and brought it to his mother in great haste; and when he reached the door of his father's house, pursued, and was entering it in a great hurry, his foot stumbled on the threshold, and falling down into the room where his mother was sitting, the two pigmies seized the ball which had dropped from his hand, and departed, showing the boy every mark of contempt and derision. On recovering from his fall, confounded with shame, and execrating the evil counsel of his mother, he returned by the usual track to the subterraneous road, but found no appearance of any passage, though he searched for it on the banks of the river for nearly the space of a year.

The Scents of Midsummer

2009-06-02T23:22:00.004+01:00

An archive image from a Pagan Movement magazine in 1981

A final piece, for now, from the Pagan Movement Archive,

a short but evocative offering, again from Tony Kelly:

For as long as I can remember, and before ever I knew its meaning, the word 'pagan' has evoked feelings of longing, beauty, and half-memories in my soul, and before I knew where to find expression of my pagan longing or even the form of it, my heart ached for its strange elusive fascination - as formless as the scents of Midsummer, but as bewitching and alluring, and drawing always on and deeper. The same is true of the word witch', a woman who brews in her cauldron such a brew as I later discovered was prepared for Afagddu, in her hope, her love and her sorrow, by Ceridwen, but it was the image that called to my soul because I knew, though not with my mind, that the image was only a little distorted, and the real was deep, dark, and old. I came, by chance, to a reference to Pan and the Moon Goddess, and again there was that strange call, and I needed no more than those mere words to revive something in me and remind me of things I had known of the moon kith. But it was always just over the hill, where the Sun was setting, or lost in the scents of the grass and clover, or strangely joined to the male fern that grew in our garden (and I didn't know then the fern lore of Faerie). Now it doesn't need emphasis to say that a person in whose soul these things begin to stir again is going to feel lonely, as a Celt among Saxons, or as a fern in the dry lands of the east. So perhaps I should admit, for it may be true, that I don't write for the earnest 'enquirer', but rather because of the pain and longing in my soul, in the hope that others of us would hear and together we would find the Moon Maiden. It isn't the enquirer, however earnest, that I want to attract, but rather, the pagan who already knows the call of Faerie but needs help and companionship in tracing it to its source.

[FaerieN21]

Symbols and Faery

2009-05-22T00:03:00.006+01:00

Here's another archive item from the Pagan Movement Ethos Group.

This is part of the same string of contributions from Tony Kelly as the '4-value logic' piece in the previous post.

I want to talk about symbols and our use of them. A long time ago - and I can't remember how long, but it might have been a century - a photograph was published showing a group of fairies dancing in a ring about a girl's head. This picture, known as The Cottingley Fairies' became famous, and while fraud has all along been suspected, the girl herself maintained her honesty to the last and the picture remained a mystery. Since the time when that picture was taken, optical methods have developed considerably so that it's now possible to display clearly detail which might have been quite invisible to the eye. Well, someone had the idea of subjecting the photograph of the Cottingley Fairies to modern optical methods and, as the experiment was reported in New Scientist', the result, with enhanced contrast, showed that the fairies' were supported on a string. So it was a fraud after all. And that, many would say, should be the end of the matter. But a week or two later in the correspondence columns of New Scientist' (which are not noted for their lack of humour) there was a letter in which it was said: "... it was, of course, a fairy string..." Now that was important, though I doubt whether the writer of the letter knew it, for it's the faery hosts themselves who delude us into believing in them while they don't themselves exist.

   There is indeed no room for them in a world bounded by Aristotelian (that is, ordinary') logic where the only judgements are true' or false' since Faery is no more false than it is true, and if we aproach with our choices limited to belief' or disbelief' the faery hosts will pass unnoticed, for the mesh of such a sieve is too coarse. And the open mind, the best of all containers for new knowledge, just so long as it remains open, is neither blessed nor burdened with knowledge. This could get very deep, but I won't take this particular path any deeper into the thicket unless people would like me to and say so. Instead, I would ask what use we make of fairies, and of Faery, and what use they make of us.

   Consider this dream: A young woman has a nightmare in which she wakes up from sleep to see, in the darkness of her room, a filthy stinking tramp of a man sitting on the end of her bed, whereupon she wakes up in terror. That man is one of the darker denizens of the faery brood. What use has he of the sleeping woman? She knows full well what use he would have of her. But what use has she of him? Would you say she had no use of him? Why then did she invite him to her bed? Would you say she did not invite him? Then, perforce, he must have come uninvited. But does that which does not even exist invite itself, of its own volition, into our company? Here's a pretty choice for us then: either the faery man comes uninvited, so he must therefore exist, or: the faery man does not exist and can therefore have no will to invite himself, and so therefore the woman herself made the invitation. Shall we ask the woman why she invited so loathsome a being and, why, having done so, she wakes up with all speed to be away from him? It's a thicket of paradoxes, isn't it? Of course we don't (now) need Freud and all his merry men to drag us on a path where already our feet have learned to run, but not all paths are as clear as this one, and not all feet may tread only the paths they choose.

   We live in many worlds if the Moon that looks at us from the wind-stirred lake is many moons, and some people are locked away for carrying out actions in one world which were more appropriate to another, but three worlds (and perhaps four) are of particular interest to us, and they are waking, dreaming, fantasy and, perhaps, trance. They overlap considerably, both obviously and very unobviously indeed. We could get lost in definitions here, but as definition is not our present interest, let's be content with a broad perspective, at least until anyone wants to explore a particularly enticing byeway.

   There's no need now to say much about the waking world, and I won't say anything about trance because it's not in my experience, but I will say something about the other two, and I'll begin with the dream world. In many ways the waking world and the dream world are essentially identical and self-consistent; strange irrationalities or peculiar sequences of events in either the waking world or the dream world are usually only seen in their strangeness from a vantage point in the other. The laws of physics, for instance, which are rigid in the waking world, are much more mutable in the dream world while the laws of emotion, by contrast, which are tyrranical in the dream world, are very mutable indeed in the waking world where so much lies hidden and bent beneath a veil of hypocrisy. There are no lies in dreams, as there are no events without causes in the waking world. In the waking world an event may speed or thwart a wish; in the dream world a wish may conceive or unmake an event. Does the dream world exist? If it does, where does it exist? And what of the dream that even the dreamer has left, buried and unremembered, in the dark caverns of the night? Let's not waste our time with such riddles as these for they have no answer, and the way out of this thicket is to look at the meaning of the word exist'. In this context, it means nothing at all, so let's not be caught on this hook. Logic was invented by a logician, and doesn't contain him. What we can say is: that some things from the waking world we can bear with us into our dreams (and some things we bear though with choice we would not) and some memories from our dreams we can bring back with us into our waking world, and of these memories, some are precious.

   Now in a dream I met the Goddess. When I met her it didn't occur to me to put to her the question: "Do you exist?" It didn't occur to me in the dream; and it doesn't strike me now as being at all a useful question. That's not how one relates to the Goddess. Now whether the Goddess had come to me in a forest of the waking world or in a dream of the night, it doesn't make the slightest difference because the response is the same and the memory is the same, and my mind overflowed in the dream, as it would in waking, with the very source of being. Her reality was to experience, whether waking or in dream, as concrete is to mist. There was love in it indeed, but there was also something which was as real, as unchanging and as warm compared with love, as love is all of these compared with indifference. She was dressed in a silver gown, which is not how I would have sought to find her, and the silver was not so much scintillating as a dull grey. She was not in the least out of this world', but very much of it. Her visible form was not altogether important, and what form she took she did for reasons that I don't know. If I think of her as she was then, I think of her form as she showed it to me then, and I'd love that form if ever I saw it again; but for all that, it wasn't the form which spoke to my soul, but the Goddess who took form to enchant me.

   Now there's something not altogether different in our experience of hauntings. People who use trip wires, infrared detectors and all the rest of the electronic apparatus seldom if ever catch a real ghost, and the Society for Psychic Research has almost empty books. Ghosts are not that stupid or clumsy; they're very subtle indeed, and they'll wait until your friends have gone home before they'll put a foot under your door. Or they'll meet you on the lonely road, far from the haunts of people. They might wear chains, and they might carry their head under their arm, but such are the exception.

  More likely, the ghost you'll see will be a wraith of the dead, once known to you, and it will be the ghost, and not you, who make the tryst, though both the ghost and you will keep it. There's no escape from a ghost that has laid its clammy hand on your heart for that hand is nearer than breath, and it's no comfort to know that the ghost that stands so menacingly mournful but a few paces away, has stood in that way, in that place, and with that misery, before others who stood where now you stand. Now there's a powerful symbol! What will you do with a symbol that won't lie down? Well, there's exorcism, but would you go to all that trouble for just a symbol? And in any case, some ghosts resent ineffective attempts at exorcism. Ghosts are very like dream symbols. They have this in common with dreams: that they come unbidden. And they have this difference: that the ghost may haunt not only you. Ghosts are made of horror, but above all else, they are made of misery and sadness and unfulfilled longing, and they are condemned to toil in a dolorous task for untold years, unless it be grief itself that binds them.

   Now let's consider the fantasy world. It has this difference from the real world, and as much from the dream world, in that we don't at any time believe our fantasies to be fact. And in some cases, indeed, we'd be very dismayed if our fantasies were fact. I won't discuss passing and trivial fantasies such as a person might have momentarily when buying a sweepstake ticket, but something more elaborate. All of us use sexual fantasies, for instance, and while some may be simple and direct, others may be amazingly complex and bizarre, but whatever the detail, what they have in common is the creation of a kind of world in which we can enjoy ourself, but in which it's not necessary actually to believe. Belief is quite irrelevant. It might, or might not, be some little labour to build up the image of the man, the woman, or other entity, animate or inanimate, of our fantasy, but once built, our relationship with that symbol can be intense and rewarding. Often the symbols are not understood (and it's not necessary to understand them) and often sexuality in such fantasies is itself not the real, but a further symbol of the real which lies deeper. Nor are the symbols one uses necessarily the same as or even similar to the symbols of another. In a sense it's arbitrary, or if it isn't, the choices are made in deeper layers of the psyche than the conscious. Now does a fantasy exist or not? Again, it's a matter of what we mean by exist', and again if linguists and logicians would like to play with that, I don't think we should waste our time doing so. It's not a question of: Is it or isn't it?' but of: Do we like it, or don't we?' A fantasy is a tool we use to achieve some satisfactions, and in this it shares ground with the waking world, for we use the waking world to help us to achieve some satisfactions. And a rite is a shared fantasy projected onto the waking world, not haphazardly of course, but by careful work on our symbols, and by integrating them with the changing moods of the wild and beautiful Earth.

   In this, fairies have played an important part. They're amoral, capricious, bound by laws of an altogether different kind from those that bind us. And they live in what, to us, is the twilight, in the moonlight, in the green deeps of the forest, in the misty bracken, in the mossy pool; they live in all places where boundaries merge. They may be seen most easily, it's said, out of the corner of the eye, but a direct gaze, if it doesn't bring ill luck, will banish the sight of them. Some have human shape and some have not, and those who have human shape are usually exceedingly ugly or exceedingly beautiful; they're seldom ordinary. And they're free as the wind. Now there's a strange bond between us and the faery folk, for they need us as we need them. Again, let's not trip over the word exist' or give it the status of a concept, which it's not; the assertion that they exist is as utterly false as is the assertion that they don't (Is twilight made of sunshine or of shadow?) There are tales of men who have danced in a faery ring and lost their wits, and of the faery child left in place of the stolen human child, but these are exceptions, even as psychosis is the exception in a society screwed up only with neurosis. On the whole, there's an uneasy truce between the masses of humankind and the hosts of faery, and few of either kind have, of old, trod the paths that wind along the border. For some, the faery people are tiny and winged, but this is but one aspect of them; their forms are many - as many as there are passions in the human mind.

   Now in the drawing of a picture, say, of a tree in November when the cold wind is blowing and the things of fur and feather are dwindling in their thousands as the food is becoming scarcer and the millions are succumbing to the frost, the tree alone may speak of the wind, of the cold, and in its leaves, of the loss. But a fairy would do more, not by standing stridently in the forefront of the picture, for no faery would so stand, but in the background, in the gloaming, by the leaning of her body and the blowing of her hair, or by the slant of his arm or the look in his eye, by the tatters of their dresses or the withering of their fingers. These children of the wild and of the passions, who play leap-frog over the logician's tidy fences, may say in their dancing and in their eyes, in their beauty and their pity, what the words of many would make a labour of, and what the strokes of the artist might otherwise obscure. When we meet these folk in goblin grottoes, of course, we know they're counterfeits; but in children's fairy story books, sometimes the elven tongue may be read between the lines, and the amoral revelry of the faery hosts may be glimpsed between the leaves. But it's not every book of fairy stories whereon the faery host has set its seal, for their tongue is of the silver and defies the leaden pen, and their dance is all of insect wings and moonlight, and defies the unwieldy brush.

   The Earth in Spring is a maiden, fair and dight in green, and she is a very enchantress in the May and her priestess enacts her love and longing. But the Enchantress is the Moon, roaming in the wild and open sky and dancing on the western hills of an evening. But the Earth in Spring is not the Moon, and the symbols are confused. And neither is the Earth a maiden, and neither does her priestess bear all the forest on her bosom or wear upon her back the star-strewn emptiness of the black and open night. The oak in his strength is a symbol of all that is sturdy in a man; the oak in her abundance and the two hundred who feed on her is a symbol of a mother's abundance. Symbolism can become involved, but basically it's a tool and its contradictions are problems only to those who try to read with the head what was written or painted by the heart. Now there are two more symbols! I feel, myself, that the function of a symbol is to evoke, and if in this it fails, then, for that person, that symbol is of no use, because any other function of a symbol is almost certainly better achieved by something more direct.

For myself, I do find Faery evocative (and some are our native gods in disguise). They seem to carry with them something that is wild and very old, and someting which we, in our progress, seem somehow to have lost by the wayside.

4valued (Faërie) Logic

2009-05-14T21:57:00.007+01:00

Here is the first of a number of 'archive' items to be posted here. This one is from The Pagan Movement Ethos Group which produced a lot of valuable material during the 1970's. There will be more of this.

4valued (Faërie) Logic

Tony Kelly

I wrote about four-valued logic last time ..... [and] ..... left the subject where your own intuition might explore it, and that's where I'm going to leave it now. Let it be a lure, a challenge, or a taunt on the path. It isn't a straight path. I introduced the word nim' and tried to hint at the meaning of it by using it repeatedly, and we saw that in this way, we got four different statements which repeated themselves endlessly, like this:

The truth is in the dance.

The truth is nim in the dance.

The truth is not in the dance.

The truth is not nim in the dance.

Let's think about the Realm of Faery, a faery ring, and enchantment. Does Faery exist? Should we answer "Yes!" or "No!" or "Nim!" or "Not nim!"? The answer "yes" is neither respectable nowadays nor correct. To answer "no" is respectable, but it isn't correct. Here's a story: Once, there was a man travelling alone over Greenberrow Heath in the evening when, just as twilight was falling, he heard the sound of strange wild music and suddenly saw in a grassy hollow a group of beautiful women of the faery kind dancing in a ring before him. He was so captivated by the music and the graceful steps of the dancers that he threw all caution to the wind and entered the ring and danced there with them. He soon found the pace took all the agility he could muster, and his legs began to ache and he felt tired but, try as he might, he couldn't break out of the dance. Round and round he went like a whirlwind and he danced the whole night through till the break of day when, at last, the faery troupe vanished and he fell from exhaustion in the grass where his friends found his body next day, and his shoes quite worn through. And when at last he awoke and was able to speak to them he said it was as if he couldn't find the way out of the dance. "And how is that?" they asked him. "It was my big feet," he said, "and I couldn't find the right step. The rhythm was in it; it was going nim, nim't, nim, nim't, nim, nim't' all the time, and I couldn't get it into my head to think is, isn't, is, isn't, is, isn't'' at all. I wanted a half-step, and I couldn't for the life of me find it."

For more Pagan Movement material go Here:

The Queen of Faery

2009-05-06T00:20:00.006+01:00

At the village fete the May Queen is crowned and so the Queen of Faery is welcomed among us. Sometimes she invites herself as when Rhiannon arrives on a white horse to propose to Pwyll in the Welsh tales in Pedair Cainc y Mabinogi. In the Scots ballad tradition, the story of Thomas the Rhymer tells us that she comes on a white horse to carry off Thomas who mistakes her for The Queen of Heaven:

Oh no, oh no, Thomas, she said
That name does not belong to me
I am the Queen of fair Elfland
That am hither come to visit thee

She tells him he must go with her and she will confer upon him the gift of poetry:

She mounted on her milk white steed
She's taken True Thomas up behind
And aye whenever her bridle rang
The steed flew swifter than the wind

[…]

Light down, light down now, true Thomas
And lean you head upon my knee
Abide and rest a little space
And I will show you ferlies three

What are the conditions of such a pact as Thomas enters into with the Queen, or, for that matter, which anyone else might enter into with any other faery? These are often very specific and the consequences for not obeying them can range from a sudden termination of the experience to never being able to return home:

But Thomas, you must hold your tongue
Whatever you may hear or see
For if you speak word in Elfin land
You'll ne'er get back to you ain country

Then they came on to a garden green
And she pulled an apple frae a tree
Take this for thy wages, True Thomas
It will give the tongue that can never lie.

One way or another the sense here is that the recipients of faerie beneficence must surrender up something of themselves in return. If that something is the soul, how might this be understood? In a Christian context the Faustus story links this to damnation, and the stories in black American folklore of e.g. Robert Johnson going to the crossroads at midnight to gain his ability to play the guitar also draw on similar themes. But need it be seen like this? Can it be construed that this is a reciprocal agreement rather than one that is necessarily to the detriment of one party? Who will take the risk for the privilege of visiting the faerie realm?

Resources and links for this post: http://homepage.mac.com/teyrnon/Rhiannon/Faery.html