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Macha's Twins, a Review

29/6/2018

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"The mythic reveals itself
When we wait and watch"





These two lines are the final words of Macha's Twins, by Kate Fitzpatrick, a book that is hard to categorize as one thing or another. Part autobiography, a mixture of prose and poetry, a recounting of mystical experiences, I'm glad I read it and yet I'm left wondering what exactly it was that I read. My feelings about this book are incredibly mixed, so all I can do here is try to describe it and leave the reader to decide whether it might be for them.
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Macha Curses the Men of Ulster by Stephen Reid
I am not familiar with Kate Fitzpatrick's work. I suspect that she has her own following, and that this book might be more meaningful to them than it was to me. From the book we learn that she has led many workshops on themes of Celtic spirituality and women's empowerment. She plays the fiddle, she is trained in Gestalt work, is a shamanic practitioner, and a regular attendee of various conferences and gatherings. Although she includes a certain amount of autobiographical material in the book, memories from her childhood in Northern Ireland, a few scenes from her adult life, most of this is enigmatic, and somehow leaves me unsure as to how deeply I can trust her to be candid. She offers beautiful, vivid descriptions of different places she has lived, for example, but is vague about how she made a living while in those places. What she doesn't say, or why she doesn't feel comfortable saying it, makes me just a little uneasy. This may not be central to the book, but why does she choose not to mention it, when she often includes other trivial information like what she was wearing?

Trusting the author is important in a book like Macha's Twins because the content is so subjective. Much of the narrative tells of the mystical visions, mostly of Macha, that Fitzpatrick had over a period of years from the early 1990s until 2015. I am always open to things like this. Open to the possibility of the gods and spirits speaking to us. Being open minded also means being open to the possibility that these things are not always genuine, even when we think they are. Making sense of one's own mystical visions and spiritual revelations is challenging enough. Making sense of another person's gnosis is even trickier. Rational thought helps, but so does feel. My feeling here is that the author was keeping something about herself hidden, not in a self-effacing way, or an "I'm a private person" way, but rather that she was being a bit coy about certain aspects of her life. Uncomfortable in her own skin? Afraid of being laughed at? Maybe it's nothing. It bothered me.

The overall theme of the book is that Macha encourages the author to tell Her story, to become involved in work to help heal the land, the people, the old wounds, and especially the women, of Northern Ireland, both from Macha's mythic curse on the men of Ulster, and from the more recent troubles of the 20th century. I found Fitzpatrick's description of her first vision of Macha electrifying. Many other things also ring true, such as this early description of Macha: "Macha was, and still is, The Horse Goddess because her female spirit was akin to that of an unbroken horse. Wild, free and strong. She could run fast and never become prey to the dominant male power of the day."

Other things in the book ring true for me because I have experienced them. Twice the author talks about horses moving in patterns, and this having a kind of mystical aspect. Once she is describing movements required during a conventional riding lesson, the other time she is describing a vision of riders of the Tuatha De Danann. From my years in Parelli Natural Horesemanship, I know how circles, figures of eight and cloverleaf patterns can become like a ceremony, or a form of meditation for both horse and human. I had long put that knowledge aside, because I also know that just that type of work is frequently unpleasant for horses, even unintentionally abusive. However, it's interesting to see someone else noticing the same thing.

Another recurring experience that I've had, but never heard anyone else describe, is seeing people and events from an earlier time somehow overlaid on an event I'm part of. This goes beyond the realms of a vivid imagination, into some kind of momentary clairvoyance. "I look over at the women of the Centre and see them as queens of Navan Fort. ... I watch the men of the staff team standing and greeting people in various corners of the space. They glow with the quiet dignity of ancient royal hosts. In their confidence, humour and generous welcome to the folk arriving. they are like princes of the Tuatha De Danann."  Yes. I've had that sense, just a few times, of people from an earlier time coming to lend their spirits, almost in a sense of overlaying another time, a similar event, similar people or ancestors, to something that is happening in the present.

There is much more in this book that rings true for me, as well as some beautiful descriptions of nature. What I've received from this book, however, could have easily been presented in a much shorter work. I found the author's relentless use of the historical present tense throughout the book to be pretentious and irritating. Nor can I understand why some of the sections presented as poetry weren't presented as prose. I got tired of hearing what people were wearing. There were too many descriptions of Shamanic work, spiritual workshops, and so on, which were too vague to be helpful. So okay, this will never stand up as a piece of literature in my eyes. It felt too long in places, but the good parts were very good.

This book contains some beautiful and inspiring passages. Descriptions of visions of Macha, and of the Tuatha De Danann, that not many would be brave enough to publish, and other visions and knowings that made sticking with this book worth the effort. "The gallop of other horses is thundering on the earth over miles and miles of journey. You can hear the endless prayer of the old women who sit in forests over fires. Old women have been waiting for a spark to hit the soul of men. ... Waiting for the lakes and wells and rivers that have held the tears of women, men and children to be emptied of grief and refilled with the sparkling fresh hope of a new dawn. Old women are waiting for all this as they spit their chewed-up rage and impotence into the fires." There are a number of passages that are deeply touching and ring so very true in this book. I'm glad I made a note of some of my favourites, so that I can return to them in future.

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My own relationship with Macha has been nothing more than a tentative telling of Her myth at a few gatherings. She's been at my door, and this book has set me on the road to deepening that relationship. Sometimes, the messenger in these things is not so important as the message itself. In spite of my doubts about this book, I certainly feel that my sense of Macha has been greatly increased by reading it. I'm left wanting to parse through all these new impressions, along with re-reading the original myth, so I can ask myself what I feel now. What I know now.

Macha's Twins by Kate Fitzpatrick was published by Immram Publishing, Inishowen, Donegal in 2017 It's available from Amazon and other booksellers.

If you enjoyed this review, you might also like my recent reviews of two other books about horse goddesses: Epona Revealed? and New Book About Rhiannon...
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The Romany Gentleman

7/6/2018

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So many people seem to be creating fabulous things these days, and I'm an incurable share-a-holic. I know many of my friends and readers would enjoy this film.
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Tom Lloyd's Romany Rai, a film worth watching.

My friends who live in Cumbria are reminding me, via facebook, that it's Appleby Fair week -- this being a great traditional horse fair and gathering of Gypsies and Travellers from far and wide, in a small Cumbrian town. With impeccable timing, award winning film maker Tom Lloyd, who pretty much grew up attending the fair with his father, Walter, has just released a wonderful new film about the fair. I knew Tom's work from a heartbreakingly beautiful series of short films about traditional Fell Pony breeders, Endangered Species - referring not to the ponies, but the breeders, themselves, and their way of life. (Those films are free to watch, by the way.)

Entitled Romany Rai (Romany Gentleman), the film features footage shot at the fair over quite a long period of years, much of it of horses and horsemen, but also featuring some interviews about the travelling life. Being both frank and non-judgemental, the film strikes a tone which mostly sidesteps the usual pitfalls of films about Travellers. We see good, bad and indifferent horsemanship, which is exactly what you would see if you filmed the non-traveller community at a show or out riding. There are some nice interviews, mostly with older members of the community, some of whom express themselves quite eloquently, as well as footage of Walter Lloyd giving his take on Gypsy/Traveller history and his own family's background of generational mutual acceptance with them. If this film occasionally strays into a slightly romantic view of Travelling People, that is probably out of respect for Walter, who died just a few months ago at 93.

A horse-drawn journey breaking apart stereotypes of Gypsy and Traveller culture from Dreamtime Film on Vimeo.

PictureWalter Lloyd (Manchester Evening News)

Walter Lloyd was well known around Cumbria and among Fell Pony people. The Lloyd family breed ponies under the Hades Hill (Hades rhymes with fades) prefix, and Walter was considered a bit of an eccentric and something of a hippie, locally - both of which were deserved, in the best possible way. What a lot of people didn't realise was just what a renaissance man he was. He held an MA in agriculture from Cambridge, fought in WWII, farmed in Cornwall, Lancashire and Cumbria, worked in civil defense for Rochdale and emergency planning for Manchester, helped organise the safety and emergency side of rock festivals like Glastonbury and The Isle of Wight, taught coppicing and charcoal burning, built bow top living wagons .... well, you get the picture.

During the years I lived in Scotland I met many Scottish Travellers, both through my traditional music work and my time with horses in East Lothian. Speaking of traditional music, there are some nice musical moments in this film, too. I was attracted to it more for the horses than anything, and there are certainly plenty of horses here. I suppose that like Walter Lloyd, there is a side of me which intuitively (or perhaps only romantically) connects Traveller horse-culture to ancient Celtic horse-culture. That connection may or may not be on solid ground, historically. I've read attempts to unravel the question, but not deeply enough to feel satisfied. Also, like Walter, I am simply fascinated by alternative ways of life. During one of the early scenes of the film, we see directly into one gentleman's living wagon while he is being interviewed, and I found myself thinking how nice it would be to move into that, and just melt into the countryside. The truth is, I know that year-round life travelling in a bow top is almost impossible in Britain now, even for people who like cold, wet weather as much as I do.

Romany Rai is available to rent or buy  on Vimeo.


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My ears are keen, my breath is warm

A chapbook collection containing the short story The Wild Mare, plus four poems which share the theme of horses.


Size 8.5" x 5.5"

21 pages


Please see product page for more information.

$
8.00    
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The Fool and His Dancers

3/6/2018

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It occurs to me, before I review a book about Border morris dancing, that some readers may be left wondering what that even is. So, before I start, allow me to offer you a video, in case you need some context, or just like watching videos of morris dancers, like I do.

A book review of some very dark morris

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For someone who has divided their life between Scotland and the US, I spend an inexplicably large amount of time thinking about Morris dancing. I can't explain this. It just is -- and I don't even know when it started. I especially like the way Border morris has exploded in the past decade or so. It's vibrant, dark, edgy and sometimes overtly Pagan. I was pretty excited, then, to discover that someone who's been on the inside of Border morris, even in at the beginning of its revival, had written a book about it.

Turns out the book is pretty good. Rob Elliott is a witty writer, and he strikes a good balance here between serious thoughts and funny stories about morris dancers drinking too much. I like the way he acknowledges the scholarly work done by others, and knows the historical references, but isn't limited by them. He's willing to talk about what feels right, and what feels true, and that's important when working within a tradition that is also a living thing.
They had lost the essence of dance and moved into something labelled 'traditional folk dance display', an embodiment of nostalgia recreating a perceived aspect of life long ago, diminishing these displays to little more than mobile museum pieces. By contrast, Silurian acknowledged the roots and history of morris dancing but were creating something original - a new version of an old principle. We needed to be relevant, to have power over the hearts of the crowd, to bewitch them. If we didn't cast a spell over them, we saw ourselves as having failed. We didn't want to project the two dimensional quality of a film.
What fascinates me about morris is its matter-of-fact public-ness, and the way that the public, and many of the dancers, think of it as an "ancient (Pagan) fertility rite", and are perfectly happy with it taking place in front of the pub on a Saturday afternoon. The extent to which it actually is any of that in the historical sense, has long ago ceased to be the point. And perhaps, if it looks like a duck....
We gave them White Ladies Aston stick dance, which was implemented with such energy that the dancers were blurred by a kind of snowstorm flurry of wood chips as the sticks began to split, feather and disintegrate. This was morris with attitude and woodsmoke and the crowd couldn't get enough. They'd never seen anything like it. We had the audience in our spell, a spell we hadn't knowingly expected to weave.

We began to think about what it must have been like to dance a fertility dance all those millennia ago. Highly speculative of course, because we had no real way of knowing but we just pictured ourselves as twentieth-century torchbearers for something very ancient. After this performance, it was certainly easy to imagine that dancers in pre-Christian communities might have put themselves on a higher plane, and out of reach of ordinary mortals, by clothing themselves in a particular way, introducing a de-humanising disguise and creating some wild dance routines. We understood in that moment how an enigmatic appearance might create mystery, how mystery touches people and moves energy and how energy might conjure magic.
This book tells the story of the first revival Border morris side, Silurian Border Morris, and how it evolved from a white-clad group of hanky wavers, into a blacked-up, tail coated, bunch of hellions. As is always the case when a group is breaking new ground within a tradition, Silurean enjoyed the shock and occasional outrage they inspired, and this aspect adds to the hilarity of some parts of the book. The author does a good job of telling these tales in a way that makes them funny without the reader needing to have been there to get it. If there is a certain amount of self-congratulation involved in some of this, it's not that hard to forgive.

Some of the funniest stories in the book, for my money, are the ones recounting the sheer absurdity of walking around in public in Border morris kit. From punks idling in town squares to German tourists at motorway rest stops, this is likely to get a reaction.

Punk: Why are you dressed like that?
Silurian: Why are you dressed like that?
Punk: I like dressing like this!
Silurean: Well, I like dressing like this!
Punk goes back to friends: He likes dressing like that!
Elliott is very particular to talk about blacking the face as a ritual disguise in this book, and I hope people are listening. Blacked up morris dancers have come in for some flack from people who think that this tradition is somehow racist or relates in some way to black and white minstrel shows. This simply isn't the case. Blacking up is a form of ritual disguise, not of racial impersonation. It has always been a cheap and available way to hide one's identity, using soot from the fire, and to turn the known person into an unknown and potent entity.
Since we had 'gone Border', which carried the same implications as 'gone native' or 'gone feral', we of course blacked up every time we made an appearance. The blacking was not simply part of the kit, it was the essential means by which we exchanged our human form for something altogether more intangible. There was an unspoken acknowledgement amongst us that to make an appearance in kit but without the blacking would be inconceivable.

It was difficult to recognise us individually with our matt black bearded faces, now crowned with black bowler hats. Most people really had no idea what we were all about. It seemed we captivated them and frightened them in equal measure, which helped to create the mystique. We became strongly unified, an effect no one could have predicted.

Only  with a performance immanent, would we dress up and black our faces. We would all stick together during this 'ceremony' until the last man was ready and then, completely attired -- bells, hats and all -- we would go...
Interspersed among the tales of lost morris weekends and moments of Silurean triumph, Elliott weaves an interesting thread of the social history of the British folk scene of the late 20th century. If you happen to have been a part of that, you will recognise the draughtsman-like accuracy of his sketches of that time and place. Some of which might evoke a self-directed cringe or two, if you really were there in your corduroy trousers or floral frock.

This is a really good book, and a much funnier book than I have really let on in this review. If you are interested in what public ritual, with a small r, really means, what tradition means, and why it's worth rewilding it, rather than preserving it, you will enjoy this.


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