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Reading the Wren

26/12/2015

Wren Day traditions: J.B. Keane's The Bodhrán Makers

It's St. Stephen's Day, and today my facebook feed was full of references to wren boys and their songs - from Ireland, Wales and the Isle of Man. It's a widespread traditions all over the British Isles, and some parts of mainland Europe, too, to carry a wren, or an effigy of one, in a mumming procession or similar, perhaps in costume, usually collecting money. There's a lot going on here. Maybe I'll research it for a year and then write a proper piece about it!

What I thought I would share for now, though, is a wonderful novel about this tradition in Ireland, called The Bodhrán Makers. The book, first published in 1986, is by John B. Keane, who wrote The Field, among others. It tells the story of a group of poor, rural folk living around the village of Dirrabeg, in the Dingle Peninsula, in the 1950s. They are trying to organise a "wren dance", which at that time had become the ultimate purpose of the Wren Day tradition of collecting money from house to house, as the money collected was used to pay for the drink, and perhaps some food, for the evening's entertainment.

The novel tells the story of the many difficulties and adventures undertaken, as the wren boys of Dirrabeg scrape their money together while attempting to fly under the radar of the highly obstructive Canon Tett, who is out to foil their unholy plans by any means he can muster. The book is rich with both traditions and humour, as well as a healthy dose of realism which counters any tendency to romanticise the rural past. I'll leave you with a taster, and a bit of a dance.

      'Line up boys!' the order came from a stern-faced, middle-aged man on the outskirts of the party. Of all the wrenboys he alone had an unblackened face. Instead of the customary straw headgear he wore an unusually tall hat bedecked with sprigs of tendrils of ivy. On his hands were white gloves, immaculately clean. He wore an ancient swallowtail coat which in its heyday had been black as ebony but now bore a definite tinge of venerable green on its fringes which seemed set to impose itself all over.
    On his large feet he wore hobnailed boots, one laced with red ribbon and the other with green. In his right hand he bore a stout, freshly-cut hazel staff, six feet in length and straight as a broomstick. The staff was also bedecked with ribbons, multicoloured and flowing to a length of eighteen inches. He was a tall, well-made man over six feet six inches in height and there was about him an aloofness and calm dignity which set him apart from all the others.
                                                                                        ____________________

    'Where do you think you're going!' The Canon's question stopped Father Stanley in his tracks. The curate raised the umbrella and peered through the curtain of rain. He was astonished to see the Canon standing by the wall, umbrella now lowered for confrontation.
    'Answer my question. Where do you think you're going!' He relished the apparent shock written all over his curate's face and the inability to answer by one who had always been master of the trite response up until this moment.
    'Come on man. answer my question,' the Canon shouted.
    When Bertie answered his words came slowly and with absolute clarity. 'I'm going out,' he said, 'just for a moment to pay my respects to the wrenboys and to give them the half-crown which is their due.'
    'You will turn on your heel, you impertinent buck and you will go back into that presbytery or I'll have you before the bishop for deserting your post.'

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Some Midwinter Reading

23/12/2015

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The Green Knight, witchcraft, poetic language, and lots and lots of bad weather.

I have been wanting to share these books with my readers for awhile, but as you may have noticed, I haven't been blogging. I have no idea whether my current enthusiasm for writing here will last, but if it doesn't, at least you'll have some ideas for other things to read, and both these books relate to one of my favourite things -- winter!

The first, Simon Armitage's wonderful translation of the classic Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a real Christmas tale. If you are not familiar with this story, it begins with a Christmas feast in the court of King Arthur. The monstrous Green Knight arrives, and Gawain finds himself locked into a promise to find him one year hence, for the interesting prospect of allowing this ogre to behead him. While I have barely begun to scratch the surface when it comes to the symbolism surrounding this story of an aging king, a foolish knight, a "green man" and of beheading game myths, I am captivated by other aspects of this book, which make it instantly accessible.

Simon Armitage has a wonderful irreverent approach to medieval texts, and the Anglo-Saxon tradition of alliteration suits his sense of humour very well. Not all old texts are serious and dry, and anyone who likes poetry and a good yarn will love this book. The fact that the dialect of the "Gawain poet" (we don't know the name of the author of the original) is very close to Armitage's own really adds to the fun here, and lends an immediacy and authenticity to this translation.

Yes, I did use the word fun. This book reminded me what a great story the green knight is, and introduced me to what an amazing and talented guy Simon Armitage is. I first read this over the holiday period, so naturally there were many interruptions. I found myself using these as an excuse to go back three or four pages from where I had stopped reading, each time I picked the book up, simply because I enjoyed re-reading passages and it made the experience last longer!

The following excerpt is a fine description of the changing seasons, as Gawain watches the year slip by, after accepting the Green Knight's challenge at Christmas, and finds the time to face his fate drawing near. The heavy use of alliteration is typical of Anglo Saxon poetry.

So the festival finishes and a new year follows
in eternal sequence, season by season.
After lavish Christmas come the lean days of Lent
when the flesh is tested with fish and simple food.
Then the world's weather wages war on winter:
cold shrinks earthward and the clouds climb;
sun-warmed, shimmering rain comes showering
onto meadows and fields where flowers unfurl;
woods and grounds wear a wardrobe of green;
birds burble with life and build busily
as summer spreads, settling on slopes as
                              it should.
          Now every hedgerow brims
          with blossom and with bud,
          and lively songbirds sing
          from lovely, leafy woods.

So summer comes in season with its subtle airs,
when the west wind sighs among shoots and seeds,
and those plants which flower and flourish are a pleasure
as their leaves let drip their drink of dew
and they sparkle and glitter when glanced by sunlight.
Then autumn arrives to harden the harvest
and with it comes a warning to ripen before winter.
The drying airs arrive, driving up dust
from the face of the earth to the heights of heaven,
and wild sky wrestles the sun with its winds,
and the leaves of the lime lay littered on the ground,
and grass that was green turns withered and gray.
Then all which had risen over-ripens and rots
and yesterday on yesterday the year dies away,
and winter returns, as is the way of the world
                              through time
          At Michaelmas the moon
          stands like the season's sign,
          a warning to Gawain
          to rouse himself and ride.

The BBC made a documentary about Simon and this story, which will give you an idea of what the book is like. It's also a fun-filled adventure in itself, as Armitage traces Gawain's journey through the real landscape described in the poem, in the weather of the season. Watching this, and reading the book, are becoming something of a midwinter tradition for me.

The other book I want to share with you is Corrag, by Susan Fletcher. (This novel has also appeared under the titles "Highland Witch" and "Witch Light", for reasons best understood by book publishers.) Although this novel has two dark events at its core (The Massacre of Glencoe and the impending execution of the protagonist) it is anything but dark. It is a shining light of beauty and the love of both nature and humanity.

I was riveted from the first words of Corrag's narrative. Such descriptions of nature, and of winter weather in particular, are rare to find in modern fiction, and much of the prose here borders on poetry. Although the story itself is an engaging one, for me, the obsession with nature was by far the best thing about the book. Description can be tedious, but here it is never so.

The subject of witch trials and burnings is a controversial one among Pagans. Many of us know that "the burning times" have been greatly exaggerated in some circles, while at the same time historical "witches" have been made into whatever modern self-styled witches wish they had been. I waited for this book to stumble over these issues, and perhaps to fall in my estimation because of it, but for the most part it neatly side-steps these problems in favour of good story telling and remaining true to its characters. In the first excerpt, the main character, Corrag, is describing her childhood with her mother, Cora.

Still. Winters were best.
And they were hard ones in Thorneyburnbank. A duck froze on the burn -- it squawked until a fox came, and left its webbed feet in the ice. There were icicles we sucked, Cora and I. The millpond could be walked on, and once, a tree broke from all its snow and buried a cow -- they had to dig for it with spades and hands. All night long they dug, and the cow lowed so crossly that they did not hear the Mossmen taking horses from the forge. Also, one winter, there was a wooden box -- put beneath the yew tree, and not buried, for the ground was too dark, iron-hard. The box was broken by dogs and crows who knew meat when they neared it. Poor Widow Finton. But she was dead and never felt it. All things must eat.

Here, she is describing a long journey on horseback, from Northumbria to Glencoe:

    That winter. That long, blue-lit winter that we moved through, her and I. She broke ice with her hooves. She crunched out over frosty fields and kicked snow up, and was very startled when a bough dropped its load on her back. She whinnied, charged away. I fell from her, into a drift, but the mare came back and sniffed about for me. I think she was sorry, for her ears were forwards. She always put her ears forwards when she was glad to see a thing.
    I sucked icicles. I saw some eerie, moonlit nights. Sometimes the sky was so clear that I put my cloak across her back as she slept -- for she felt the cold more than I. She was foaled in the summer, long ago.
    We rode through old reiver valleys.
    Drank from moats of castles.
    And we moved mostly at night, for these are the emptier times. I said north-and-west, in her ears, and we set out under the stars. We trod carefully in dank places. We held our breath in them -- for what else lurks in such dankness? Not much that's good, I thought. But we galloped, too -- out over the open, snow-covered wastes, and the drifty valleys, and under bare trees. She liked it.

Of her first experience of Rannoch Moor:

    Cora had promised me that beauty was in differences, in the sights that most folk did not like, or were fearful of -- she'd said for are not all other things very dull?
    And as I rode out across Rannoch Moor, I thought of her. She would have danced in it. She'd have lain down and clutched the peat, pressed it to her face. She'd have plunged her red skirts into the lochs, and tugged up the reeds, and chased the deer with her arms stretched out -- for here was her soul's home. No people. For people said witch, and tied thumbs to toes. Here, there were pools so still that there was a second sky in them, and a lone bird skimmed the water so that there were two birds. When there was wind, it rattled the heather. It came about the boulders and the sides of hills like water -- shaking itself, shrill, almost white. It whistled through the cattle skulls, and my hair beat itself like a wing on my cheek, saying fly fly fly and when the wind moved away again, I heard bees. I heard the soft tread of deer, and their teeth on the grass, and I liked them. I liked their reddish, thick bodies, and their crowns on their heads like they were the true kings of the world -- not a wheezy Dutchman. Not a Stuart hiding in France.
    I heard the lap lap of loch water, and the puck fish made with their mouths.
    North-and-west, always. And I nudged the mare on. she felt the wind in her half-tail, and went.

And of Glencoe, itself:

    Those winter nights. I'd look out at the huge sides of snowy rocks which grew about me, and I'd see their eerie colours -- grey, black, blue. Then I would go inside, where my fire spoke to itself. But still, I felt them looking down on me. I could feel their height, and darkness. I thought of their age, of what they had seen, and as I tucked up by my fire I thought they glow . . . Like living things. Their frost glinted on me, and their breath was icy-cold.
    Some people hate such thoughts. They stay away from mountains like mountains mean them harm. But what I say to myself when I see a mountain or a starry sky, or any natural thing which feels too much to bear, is what made this, made me, too. I am as special. We are made by the same thing . . . Call it God, if you wish. Call it chance, or nature -- it does not matter. Both the mountains of Glencoe and me are real, and here. Both the moon which is full tonight and you, Mr. Leslie, are here, and shining.
----------------

    This was winter then -- my season. My weather. And what a wild, Highland winter that one was. Ice creaked, and the flakes of proper snow did not fall, at first -- they hung, mid-air. They drifted about my head as I walked back from the glen, with peat in my arms. When I saw myself in darkened pools I saw my snowy hair.
    Seeing it, I thought this is the start.
    It was. These thin flurries did not last. Five days after Hogmanay, a wind blew in. It threw snow against the northern ridge, and howled up into my valley so that my roof shook. skies swelled and raced, like sea-skies do. And I wandered -- for wasn't winter always too magick to go unseen? I had never feared it. So I wandered where I knew there would be beauty -- to half-frozen water, or to the heights where deer were. They sat against rocks, blinked in the wind. I saw a white hare running -- so fast and snow-coloured it was like wind, or a flurry of flakes, and only its black eye and the pads of its feet showed it was not these things. A snow-hare . . . I had never seen one. I looked at its tracks when it was gone. I was spun in the wind when I crested peaks, and when I lay down I caught flakes on my tongue. These things. Small, and safe things.
    But in time, there was less snow. Slowly, there became more water noises, and the falling burn in my valley grew loud, and strong. I drank from it -- not on my knees, or with cupped hands, but by clutching a rock, leaning in and opening my mouth. I smiled as I drank. I tasted old winter. I drank new spring.
    Day by day, green shoots showed themselves. The snow grew dimpled and up they came -- comfrey, and motherwort. To see them was like seeing friends again. I crouched to them, thought who needs people? People aren't always like this -- by which I meant meek, and kind, and soft to touch. I gathered them, dried them. Or I powdered them up, or put them in salt. Or I let them grow on, in the earth.

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Joys of the Dark Time

21/12/2015

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The past couple of months I have been pursuing an interesting personal project, creating a calendar for 2016, just for use in the household. I found one of those printing companies which lets you upload whatever photos you like, both for the months and for individual days. I'm sure most people use them for family birthdays and anniversaries, but I used mine for both the eight major festivals, and for various obscure things which I either observe, or would like to be reminded of, like Plough Monday and Tynwald Day. I also marked the full moons with nice moon pictures and the new moons with the Faerie Faith Beth-Luis-Nion system of months. I'm perfectly aware that these have no real provenance in tradition, and are "just" a construction, but I felt like looking at them this year. Systems like this often have much to teach. Oh, yes, and I also marked the start of each traditional astrological sun sign, a system which has longstanding meaning for me. So, I think it will be quite a pretty calendar, and hopefully give me much to think about. I keep checking the post!

I have said before how much comfort I find in winter, as opposed to summer, when I suffer with the heat and brightness and insects. As I continue my spiraling path through the seasons yet again, I seem to have reached an even deeper appreciation of winter, and that quarter which runs from Samhuinn to Imbolc, and maybe a little over at the edges.

Making the calendar really brought home to me how much I love the winter traditions, from souling plays and bonfire night, through Hogmanay and the wassailing of Twelfth Night and finally Plough Monday. All through the season, I feel the growing sense of the Cailleach, until she is defeated at Imbolc. I have never feared nor hated Her. We became friends long ago. It's nice to feel the contrast between being out in the cold and coming into the warmth, to have time to feast and drink with friends, and mumming and guising are such magical things.

Yet I now live on an empty Colorado plain, with few friends at hand and even less sense of community, so what does this mean for me? I still enjoy the long nights and cooler weather immensely. The special winter light has always been magical for me. These past few weeks I have seen so many birds, huge flocks of snow geese going over morning and evening, moving between some feeding ground and water. We are also being visited my many crows, something we don't see too often. They remind me so much of Scotland. They are shy and restless, though.

Most of all I enjoy the long nights and the quiet. Long lies in the morning. It's similar to the feeling I get at the time of the new moon. Silent, spacious and peaceful. I've been heartened to read two moving pieces of writing recently which echo my feelings about this time, and do so very poetically.

In a 2009 piece for the Guardian called "Why I Adore the Night", Jeanette Winterson wrote: "I have noticed that when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing – their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling – their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses." and "Making love in the afternoon is completely different in summer and winter. To begin as the afternoon light is fading, to wake up, warm and heavy, when it is completely dark, to kiss and stroke the shared invisible body, to leave the person you love half asleep while you go and open wine … then the moment of standing barefoot in the kitchen, just a candle and two glasses to take back to bed, and a feeling of content like no other." These are things I enthusiastically agree with.

Then the other day, in a blog post titled "Let Me Lie in the Cave of My Soul", Philip Carr-Gomm quoted from a poem by Joyce Rupp:
"Too much light has pulled me away from the chamber of gestation."
and
"Let me seek solace in the empty places of winter’s passage,

Those vast dark nights, that never fail to shelter me."

Enjoy the dark time while it's here. The wheel will turn before you know it.

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Reading the Wren

Wren Day traditions: J.B. Keane's The Bodhrán Makers

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Some Midwinter Reading

The Green Knight, witchcraft, poetic language, and lots and lots of bad weather.

Joys of the Dark Time

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