The Enchanted Stick

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.