Travels with the Bone Sister ~ Dancing the Mari Lwyd for Epiphanytide

London Mari Lwyd Llundain 2020

On Friday, 10th January 2020, on a full moon night during an eclipse, I fulfilled a long-held wish to experience the Mari Lwyd. I am, of course, besotted and utterly enchanted by her.

Although the Mari Lwyd is traditionally a Midwinter or New Year wassailing custom found mostly in Glamorgan, South Wales, this one was travelling through the streets of Kings Cross in London.

London Welsh Centre Mari Lwyd poster 2020

That might seem incongruous, but it's in the nature of our folk customs, and folk music, to adapt to the place they find themselves in, and in so many ways that is their work; to root us in both familiar, and unfamiliar, territory. The London Mari provided a perfect example of this as the majority of the songs we sang were in Welsh and we were surrounded by Welsh speakers; remaking the ground.

Our folk traditions are not as fragile as we might sometimes suppose them to be. I think of them as a stream which, if forced underground, seeks a weakness on the surface through which it can bubble up, in a different form if they must And there is always a weakness where an attempt is made to subdue living water.

In Welsh tradition, where so many streams of living water are free flowing, groups would travel from house to house with the Mari Lwyd, a horse’s skull mounted on a pole and carried by someone covered in a white cloth decorated with bells, ribbons, and flowers.

The ‘hooded animal’ tradition is found in many parts of Britain. Indeed there is a similar custom to the Mari Lwyd here in my area of Kent called ‘hoodening’, or the ‘hooden horse’. The hooden horse similarly goes from house to house, or from pub to pub, but here the 'horse's head' is made of wood. At each stop the hoodeners would perform a type of mummer's play with a theme of death and resurrection; a welcome reminder in the depths of winter that life would soon return.

In both hoodening and Mari Lwyd traditions, and in similar ones throughout the British Isles, these travelling groups would demand entry to a house through song. In the case of the Mari this would take the form of an, often insulting, rhyming 'battle', or debate, known
as pwnco. 

Mari Lwyd 'call and response', pre-1918, Wikimedia

The Mari having sung to come in, the inhabitants of the house were expected to deny entry with their own answering song. This would continue, either until those taking part ran out of verses made up on the spot or couldn't remember any more of the traditional verses. The householders then (hopefully) relented and the Mari Lwyd would be granted entry.

For the verses sung by the London Mari Lwyd visit caneuongwerin.wordpress.com ~ scroll down for the English translation. On entry, we sang, 'The Mari's Triumphant Song' in both Welsh and English;

Oh goodly people of the family,
Will you come to the light so boldly
To see the Wassail without fear?
There's none like her around here.

She is an orchard of flowers,
In her livery of colours,
And her brilliant ribbons, bright and gay,
Tied in knots they give her powers.

Our mare is brisk and holy,
And thousands think her worthy
Of praise, for she is made of that
Which cannot be broken fairly.

And now I'll end my singing,
It's time to start my drinking,
And a happy New Year to all of you,
And to all the world good living.

Once inside, the Mari's carriers would be rewarded with food and drink; so many of our Midwinter customs are rooted in this sharing with those who have little. In return the Mari offered merrymaking, luck in the year to come, and might confer a house blessing, 'bendith Duw', as part of her song of thanks and farewell (similar perhaps to the Scottish New Year tradition of 'first-footing').

The custom was given various names; Old Horse in North-east England, Old Ball in North-west England, but ‘Mari Lwyd’ is the most ubiquitous. Folklorist Iorwerth C. Peate believed that 'Mari Lwyd' should be translated as ‘Holy Mary’. However, there is little evidence for the use of ‘Mari’ for ‘Mary’ in Wales prior to the Protestant Reformation. As ‘llwyd’ translates as ‘grey’ (with 'lwyd' as the feminine form), it is thought more likely that her name means ‘Grey Mare’. This would echo hooded horse traditions in Ireland and the Isle of Mann, which in those tongues are named ‘Láir Bhán’ and the ‘Laare Vane’, both translating as ‘white mare’. Interestingly, a white horse was once considered a symbol of death in both England and Germany.

The earliest recording of the Mari Lwyd tradition comes from J. Evans' ‘A Tour through Part of North Wales, in the year 1798, and at Other Times’. However, many have suggested a pre-Christian origin for our wild bone mare. In July 2019 I went along to a talk on the Kent hooden horse by my old folklore teacher, Dr Geoff Doel. He talked a lot about the possible age of our 'hobby horse' traditions, saying that, although the hooden horse isn't mentioned until the 18th Century, the Mari Lwyd is likely to be 14th Century or earlier.

Dr Dole also mentioned that, although the notion has become unfashionable, the hooden horse and similar traditions may have their roots in pre-Christian death and resurrection myths; bearing in mind that, like the seasons, Christianity is also based in death and resurrection. However, the dating of folk traditions is notoriously difficult because often only scant records are kept; people are just 'doing what tbey do', and the tradition itself changes and adapts so often, one melting into the other. We might instead think of them as a river with many branching tributaries.

Despite the challenges of dating it's interesting to note that, in 690, Archbishop of Canterbury Theodore, issued the 'Liber Penitentialis'; a list of ecclesiastical laws, in which he condemned the practice of those who, "on the kalends of January clothe themselves with the skin of cattle and carry heads of animals", directing that those who did should be subject to three years of penance. There are similar claims that St Augustine condemned the "filthy practice of dressing up like a horse or a stag" in the 5th Century, and that the church authorities in Scotland made a comparable warning.

This despite, or maybe due to, the fact that there is a Christian festival celebrating the horse, the Feast of the Ass. Mainly celebrated in France & dating back to at least the 11th Century, this feast day was said to commemorate the role of donkeys in the Flight into Egypt, but was also associated with the Feast of Fools.

Celebrated on 14th January, the Feast of the Ass involved a girl and a child being led through the village on a donkey, which would then stand beside the church altar during Mass. At the end of the service, rather than saying 'Amen', the priest would bray three times! In its older manifestation the feast also included a type of mummer's play, during which a number of prophets testified to the birth of the Holy Child as the Messiah. And this play also often included a wooden hobby horse who protests to the Angel Gabriel about the cruelty of his rider.

We might also reflect upon the story of Palm Sunday, where Jesus rides into Jerusalem on an ass, and so risks ridicule from those who consider it far too humble a mode of transport for the 'King of Kings'. This is once again an example of Jesus 'Turning the World Upside Down'; challenging our preconceptions of power, and particularly those who consider hierarchy and power imbalance the natural order.

The Feast of the Ass was suppressed by the Church in the late 15th Century, along with the Feast of Fools which similarly turned the social order on its head. The early church challenged entrenched religious, and secular, power ~ until it was accepted by the Roman Empire and began to do exactly the opposite. This tension between upholding the status quo and dismantling it has continued ever since. We see it in the actions of American Evangelical Christians who overwhelmingly support Donald Trump, contrasted with those Christians who speak out against war and stand at the border in solidarity with migrants and refugees. We see it in the Church of England allowing their premises to host the meetings of arms traders, contrasted with those who stand outside protesting that hypocrisy.

The Mari Lwyd too holds this tension, dancing on the dangerous edge between 'life-giving' and 'death-giving'; she is the bone sister draped in flowers.

I must admit that I had no idea how it would feel to be in her presence, whether terrifying or comforting, or merely interesting as an example of our folk history. I certainly wasn't prepared for the familiarity, playfulness, and absolute sweetness of her, or for how wildly alive she was, despite being made of bones. No wonder that, in this world of opposites, the Mari Lwyd resonates more and more strongly.

Vernon Watkins' 1941 poem, 'Ballad of the Mari Lwyd', speaks of this tension;

Mari Lwyd, Horse of Frost, Star-horse, and White Horse of the Sea, is carried to us.
The Dead return.
Those Exiles carry her, they who seem holy and have put on corruption, they who seem corrupt and have put on holiness.
They strain against the door. 
They strain towards the fire which fosters and warms the Living.
The Living, who have cast them out, from their own fear, from their own fear of themselves, into the outer loneliness of death, rejected them, and cast them out forever. 
The Living cringe and warm themselves at the fire, shrinking from that loneliness, that singleness of heart.
The Living are defended by the rich warmth of the flames which keeps that loneliness out.
Terrified, they hear the Dead tapping at the panes; then they rise up, armed with the warmth of firelight, and the condition of scorn.
It is New Year's Night.
Midnight is burning like a taper. In an hour, in less than an hour, it will be blown out.
It is the moment of conscience.
The living moment.
The dead moment. 
Listen.

There follows almost twenty pages of verses with alternating voices as the Mari demands to come in and is denied;

There were jumping sausages, roasting pies,
And long loaves in the bin.
And a stump of Caerphilly to rest our eyes,
And a barrel rolling in.
But dry as the grave from Gruffydd Bryn
We are come without one rest;
And now you must let our Mari in:
She must inspire your feast.

That the horse was deeply significant, practically and spiritually, to our ancestors is certain. We were following and hunting wild horses as long as 700,000 years ago, and living with them domestically from approximately 2,500 BCE. In Bronze and Iron Age Britain the horse was central to 'Celtic' spirituality. For example, the Uffington White Horse chalk figure in Wiltshire may be up to 3,000 years old. The horse is literally carved into the memory of the land. Whether this is linked to the Mari Lwyd is anyone’s guess. As with so many things in our mist-covered land, she is a mystery that we must feel the truth of for ourselves.

Storyteller, Hugh Lupton, tells us that the tradition of the Mari Lwyd is rooted in the tale that the Mari Lwyd was cast out of the Bethlehem stable on a cold winter’s night to make room for Mary to give birth to the Christ child, and that ever since she has roamed the world as a wraith looking for somewhere to give birth to her foal. This is a sad tale indeed.

MARI LWYD

The Hodening Hoss, the Marbury Dun, 
Old Bone-face the deathless am I, 
Heavy with foal two thousand years, 
Bridled with sorrow, Saddled with fear, 
I canter through pastures of tremble and quake, 
I gallop the track between sleep and awake 
Seeking the deep of welcome 
And stint for my tears. 
Let me in! 

The Mare-headed Queen, the Mari-Lwyd, 
I was mother of all the herds. 
Ten thousand years my shining foals, 
Bridled with starlight, Saddled with gold, 
Leapt the divide between living and dead, 
Quickened the year with each toss of the head, 
Galloped the deep of beauty And never grew old. 
Let me in! 

But Mother of God, the Mary Mild, 
The pregnant Maiden came, 
Bursting with Jehovah seed 
She entered my stable 
And cried out her need. 
With ropes I was dragged from the birthing straw, 
Aching with foal I was heaved to the door, 
Swapping warmth for bitter weather 
And birth of a rival creed. 
Let me in! 

And now I am nightmare, 
I am rattling womb, 
The Uffington wraith I've become, 
Forced into darkness you've made me a fiend, 
Bridled with shadow, Saddled with scream, 
From window to window traversing the night, 
My face in your glass in a shudder of light, 
Seeking that deep of welcome Befitting a Queen. 
Let me in once again, 
Let me in! 

(Hugh Lupton)

I don't believe that Mary, who was herself a refugee, would have denied anyone, particularly a birthing mother, room but this is a reminder of how much there is to be mended between those of different spiritual paths. Often, in following the folklore of our land, we might find common threads.

The Mari is a liminal being, a dweller in the in-between places; inner/outer, personal/communal. There are so many shut out in our world, so many denied, and so many parts of ourselves that we would rather forget; we might consider why, and how we could do better, as the Mari taps at the edge of our conscious and conscience to be let in. If we and our society were stripped bare would we be ashamed of what we see?

And the Mari Lwyd, or at least a horse's skull, does force us to confront our collective shame, particularly in relation to the scapegoating of women, but also the ways in which we force so many to conform; in North Wales in the 1800s, a custom known as 'giving a skull' took place. This involved placing a horse, or donkey's, skull over a woman's door on May Day as a sign of contempt for supposed transgression of the social norms. This echoes the charivari folk tradition during which a mock parade, accompanied by discordant music such as the banging of pots and pans, would move through a village to express disapproval of various types of violation of shared communal values. At best, this was a way to ensure community cohesion (often the transgressor would be represented by an effigy and would themselves join in with ribald mockery of the stand-in). Such practices could also be used against those who, for example, blocked footpaths, prevented traditional gleaning, or profiteered at times of poor harvests. But, at worst, they were also a form of vigilantism & could be used to control those who were different. Shame, both collective and personal, can be such a dangerous edge. And what we bury and refuse to acknowledge is the most dangerous of all.

Thank goodness then for the Mari Lwyd, who comes at a time when we and nature are stripped to the bone, revealed. She draws us to the edge of our collective and personal shame, with the thrill of fright and laughter to soften our journey. She enlivens the parts of us that we might have feared were cold and dead, and not only that; she dances with them.

Shame and guilt are such difficult emotions. Often we see them as the end of a journey; that just feeling them is proof that we are 'good'. But, if we are wise, they are just the beginning. The bone mare keeps our guilt and shame in motion with her clattering dance; motion that will leave them in clear view to be healed and for change and justice to come in their place.

Tonight, as I was considering how to end this piece of writing, which I must admit has been a struggle ~ how do you pin down the meaning of such an edge dwelling being? ~ I visited Twitter and saw these words from Dr Janet Lees (used with permission); "Blessed are the Latch Lifters, the stable door is never closed to them". The Mari is a true Latch-Lifter; opening the door to our secret and hidden wounds, demanding that they be given room to mend. Our bone sister truly does bring the wildest and starriest of blessings.

The Mari Lwyd is dead. Long live the Mari Lwyd!

References:

http://www.londonwelsh.org/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari_Lwyd

https://www.aux.avclub.com/celebrate-the-holidays-the-welsh-way-with-a-singing-hor-1840472293/

https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/nostalgia/wales-mari-lwyd-creature-scary-15297617

https://hyperallergic.com/345156/the-welsh-undead-horse-of-christmas-you-must-beat-in-a-battle-of-rhymes/

https://scarylittlechristmas.wordpress.com/2013/11/09/mari-lwyd-the-zombie-christmas-horse/

http://chepstowwassailmari.co.uk

https://www.google.com/amp/s/barddos.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/the-mari-lwyd/amp/

https://www.wales.com/about/culture/mari-lwyd

https://marilwyd.co.uk

https://unearthedmyths.weebly.com/mari-lwyd.html

http://www.godeeper.info/blog/rambles-with-the-mari-lwyd

http://gorsedd-arberth.blogspot.com/2009/12/mari-lwyd-and-new-year.html?m=1

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2016/12/the-mari-lwyd-dialogue-welsh-rhyme-battles-to-haunt-your-yuletide

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/mari-lwyd-156312

https://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/category/mari-lwyd/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_horse_in_Britain

Pwnco ~

https://caneuongwerin.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/wel-dyma-nin-dwad-can-y-fari-lwyd/#more-514

https://www.omniglot.com/soundfiles/songs/yfarilwyd.mp3

https://marilwyd.co.uk/gennad-i-ganu-pondering-the-pwnco/

The Hooden Horse ~

http://hoodening.org.uk/index.html

http://hoodening.org.uk/hoodening-similar.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoodening

Old Horse ~

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Horse

Old Ball ~

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Ball

Mummer's plays ~

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummers'_play

Feast of the Ass ~

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_the_Ass

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cervula

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_Fools

To Spin a Saint ~ Distaff Day for Epiphanytide

Medieval spinning

The first Monday after Epiphany is known Plough Monday and was traditionally the day when agricultural workers, mostly male, returned to work after the Christmastide festivities. But it's less well known that there is also an equivalent day for women and women's work; Distaff, or St Distaff's, Day, which takes place each 7th January.

Spinning, the process by which raw fibre, such as wool or flax, is made into thread which later becomes cloth, traditionally requires two main tools; the distaff and the spindle. The spindle, variations of which date back to Neolithic times, is a straight spike onto which the fibre is twisted, and the distaff, also called a roc or rock, the tool used to hold the unspun fibres so that they can be teased onto the spinning spindle. To control both requires tremendous co-ordination. And this was work almost exclusively done by women.

Queen Berthe teaching girls to spin flax using a distaff, Albert Anker, 1888

Bringing our attention back to Epiphany stars, in Norse mythology the goddess, Frigg, is said to spin clouds from her sparkling distaff in a star constellation known as 'Frigg's Spinning Wheel' (also Friggerock or Orion's Belt).

Frigg with her distaff

Prior to the Industrial Revolution (1760-1820 approx), spinning, along with weaving and sewing, were primarily jobs of women and undertaken in the home. All three provided clothing and other essentials for their community and also enabled them to care for children at the same time. By the 1300s 'distaff' had become a word for women's work, and for women's concerns in general. Chaucer was the first to record this useage in his 'Canterbury Tales', as did Shakespeare in 'King Lear'.

So intimately associated was the distaff with women's work that it had soon become a word for women themselves. By the 1500s, it had come into use to describe the women of a family; hence the phrase, the 'distaff side', meaning the female side, or the motherline.  There is even a collection of French folk beliefs which relates the wisdom shared amongst late medieval women whilst spinning. Published in 1480, this collection's name translates to, 'The Distaff Gospels'.

Spinning remained deeply connected with the domestic sphere even after the Industrial Revolution, for a while at least. The early spinning machinery, such as the 40 spindle jenny, was relatively affordable for cottage workers.  It was only later, when new inventions, such as the spinning jenny water frame, became too costly or too large, that spinning fell into the hands of industrialists and investors.

The majority of textile workers at this time were women, but now children, including many orphans, were also employed as their small size made them more agile in working the machinery. They would work 12 to 14 hour days, six days a week with only Sundays off, & often for poor pay. Many of the women would only take work in the factories seasonally when they could find scant work on the land. In this way relationships, with both communities and place, were slowly broken down.

And so we come to St Distaff's Day. Often when researching folk traditions we might find that their origins are in the 18th Century, and the move to towns and cities which threatened to break connection to the deeper tides of land and season. For example, many of our much beloved May Day traditions, such as the Jack in the Green, began in cities at that time, albeit with their roots in much older traditions.

Some might be disappointed by this, and often we tie ourselves in knots trying to prove that something is older than it is as though somehow that makes it more worthy. I celebrate it. To me, this is evidence that our impulse to belong, to build relationship with landscape & home is innate, primal. If it is suppressed or stamped out by Church or by State in one way it will only bubble up in another. You can't kill the Spirit!

We no longer remember why we considered it good to make offerings to the waters, but we continue to throw coins into wishing wells. When compelled to leave land that our families have lived on for generations to work in factories far from what and who we know, our reaction is to take the decorated milk pails carried by milk maids in May Day processions and make them more, turn them into a mass of leaves wearing a flower crown, the absolute essence of everything green and untamed. And  then we dance our wild Jack around dirty streets as though we were in the familiar village where our great-great-great-grandparents fell in love and planted trees. And so we are, because this is sacred space. This is holy ground, because we make it so.

The land is not just something we live on; discrete, separate. We carry it inside us. We have hope, we carry our stories no matter what the provocation to abandon them, we transcend our circumstances, and we find meaning where meaning seems impossible. This is what it means to live in sacred time, and this is exactly how we will survive the next five years of Conservative rule.

But St Distaff's Day, like Plough Monday, is older. Always held on 7th January, this was traditionally the day when women returned to their spinning after Midwinter. But it was also a resistance to becoming immediately subsumed in work, allowing the trickster spirit of the Christmas period to have one last outing. On Distaff Day the men, themselves not yet returned to the plough, would often try to steal the women's flax and, in response, the women would attempt to soak the men from head to toe with water! And if Plough Monday and St Distaff's Day happened to fall on the same day festivities would be even more raucous.

St Distaff's Day festivities, Mary Evans Picture Library

In the 17th Century, lyric poet and cleric Robert Herrick wrote of the tradition in his poem, "St Distaff's Day or the Morrow After Twelfth Night":

Partly work and partly play 
You must on St. Distaff’s Day: 
From the plough soon free your team; 
Then come home and fother them; 
If the maids a-spinning go, 
Burn the flax and fire the tow. 
Bring in pails of water then, 
Let the maids bewash the men. 
Give St. Distaff all the right; 
Then bid Christmas sport good night, 
And next morrow every one 
To his own vocation.

And spinning truly was a vocation, not only involving skill but many hours of repetitive work; one pound of raw wool could take a week to spin, and raw cotton even longer. It was a task undertaken by women of all classes, rich and poor alike, and often in the company of other women ~ before the spinning wheel the tools and raw materials needed were easily portable and so it was possible to finish daily domestic tasks and then gather to spin in the evening, and using methods employed since the earliest times; there are images from Ancient Egypt showing women spinning in exactly this way with a distaff and spindle.

Women spinning, 1500s, Pinterest

We are entering again the female space of winter. Here we find Catterntide, a celebration for lacemakers, on November 25th as we begin our journey, the Anglo-Saxon 'Mõdraniht', or 'Mothers' Night', on Christmas Eve, Mary birthing the Christ child, the Mari Lwyd; the 'Grey Mare' of South Wales, at Midwinter, Women's, or Little, Christmas on 6th January, and Distaff Day & the work of spinning on 7th January as we emerge (we might also trace 'male space', from Martinmas to Plough Monday, but more of that soon).

St. Distaff Day was also a time to honor 'mother’s spit'. Mother’s spit was an important ingredient in flax production, wetting flax fibres with saliva, which contains an enzyme that decomposes the cellulose of the flax into a sticky substance & so helps splice the threads together into yarn.

Records of St Distaff Day begin in the 14th Century, or the Late Middle Ages. It was during the Later Middle Ages that the woollen industry became the major source of income for many, with huge swathes of land dedicated to sheep farming. This was also the time when spinning moved from the domestic sphere; making yarn for use by family and close community, into being a marketable commodity. But these were the years of the Great Famine of 1315 to 1317,
the Black Death, which reached England in 1348, the Hundred Years' War with France; events which killed almost half of England's population and caused economic chaos and the unravelling of the old social order. No wonder that both women and men felt the need to 'draw the line'.

During this time nearly 1,500 villages were deserted and men and women were forced to look for work in towns and cities. Accompanying social unrest brought events such as the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. As an aside, Mr Radical Honey occasionally buys his fine English fellow's apparel in Canterbury from a the great-great-great-etc-etc-grandson of Wat Tyler, and although he works in a very traditional gentlemen's outfitters he definitely has something of the rebel about him!

In the midst of this social upheaval came St Distaff's Day; an acknowledgement that women's work must be done, but also a reminder that we are more than the work we do, more than our usefulness to the economy. There are relationships to be maintained, lines to be drawn between workers and those who benefit financially from that work, lines that everyone is supposed to know about. That the day was dedicated to a saint of course added credence to the determination not to work, or not too hard at least. Saints Days were for feasting, or for its sister fasting, but folk saints' days always fall on the feasting (and drinking) side.

But there is no 'Saint Distaff'. This is yet another example of an 'unofficial saint's holiday' designed to increase the potential for merrymaking. And merrymaking is Resistance. All the same I think that we might confer sainthood on a tool which has so benefitted us for millennia; especially one that holds a chaotic tangle of raw material and allows us to make sense of it; a saint to help us with that work would be welcome indeed.

Observance of St Distaff's Day continued for almost five centuries until the Industrial Revolution took the work of spinning into factories, dividing the women from the men, and moving work from the domestic cottage industries where one could manage one's own time into a sphere and time which was no longer one's own. When work is done by the clock there is no space for a day of merrymaking to get used to the idea of Christmas ending. And we might hazard a guess that the loss of the full Twelve Days of Christmas festivities, symbolised by our traditional 'Twelfth Cake' becoming a cake for Christmas day, meant that women would have returned to work well before St Distaff's Day.

We might celebrate then that Distaff Day is returning as more of us become interested in our old festivals and celebrations; some without quite knowing why, some to honour where we've come from, some as an act of conscious Resistance to the strangle hold of secular time and space.

St Distaff's Day flyer 

St Distaff's Day is the perfect time to gather with others for a post-Christmastide creative afternoon but also, in this time when we are so divided from those who provide us with our material comforts, to consider the lives of the people who make our clothes, often under exploitative and unsafe conditions and with low wages in countries where rules protecting workers are non-existent. We might reflect upon who is doing the 'spinning' now, and are WE the ones who the Resistance must be against? I pray to St Distaff to help us all make better choices in the year ahead.

And here, it comes to me, is the perfect tune to accompany us on these 'wild saint days of Resistance'!

Go on and speak your mind, 
lets find out what it is you have to say 
I hope nobody turns away 
You said it loud and clear; 
We have to work, 
we have to earn our way 
well I'm sorry not today 
Oh I'm sorry not today 

 Truth is if I dont make it, 
then you cant take it 
and if I dont sew it 
then you cant wear it 
truth is if I dont grow it, 
then you can eat it 
And if I dont aim it, 
then you cant shoot it 
It's that little bit left over at the end...

(The Levellers)

We will reclaim this world; not through force but by making holy; one thread, one stitch, one seed, at a time.

References:

St Distaff's Day ~

https://www.ingebretsens.com/blog/on-the-close-of-st-distaff-day/

https://www.tudorsociety.com/happy-st-distaffs-day/

http://www.thebookofdays.com/months/jan/7.htm

http://www.tellinghistory.co.uk/resources/distaff.htm

https://norfolktalesmyths.com/2019/01/02/who-believes-in-st-distaff/

Spinning ~

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_(textiles)

http://spinning-wheel.org/about1/

On 15th Century spinning techniques ~

https://15thcenturyspinning.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/how-did-women-spin-in-the-15th-century/

http://medievaleuropeilluminated.blogspot.com/2017/10/spinning-through-time-distaff-and.html?m=1

The Distaff ~

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distaff

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/distaff-meaning

The Spindle ~

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spindle_(textiles)

The Middle Ages ~

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Middle_Ages

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/England_in_the_Middle_Ages

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/England_in_the_Late_Middle_Ages

The Industrial Revolution ~

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_manufacture_during_the_British_Industrial_Revolution

Women's Christmas ~

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Christmas

https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/womens-christmas-nollaig-na-mban-celebrate-ireland

To Draw a King ~ Galette des Rois for Epiphanytide

Galette des Rois at the Walk of the Kings 

A few days ago I wrote about the Walk of the Kings; a sponsored walk which takes place each year around Epiphany. At the end all the walkers gather for a simple lunch of bread and soup, but we are also treated to Galette des Rois.

Galette des Rois, or 'King Cake', is intimately associated with the Epiphany season, especially in France. The cake takes its name from the Kings, who Matthew's Gospel tells us visited the Christ child on this day. It began around three (or seven in some reports) centuries ago as a dry French bread-style cake with sugar on top and a small bean, charm, or figurine, known as la fève or the King Cake trinket, inside it. Although it began in this way it now comes in all manner of different varieties depending on the country it's made in. Some are made from sweet brioche sprinkled with coloured sugar. Others use puff pastry filled wuth apple, almond, or chocolate/pear paste.

King Cake season lasts from the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas to Shrove Tuesday. In the Southern states of the US it is associated with Mardis Gras/Carnival, which again lasts from Epiphany Eve until Lent Eve, which there is known as 'Fat Tuesday'. It's believed that the King Cake was introduced to New Orleans from France in 1870. The themes of Mardi Gras are reflected in its colours, which were adopted only just after the King Cake tradition arrived there; purple for justice, green for faith, and gold for power.

Tradition tells us that the purpose of the King Cake is to 'draw the kings' to Epiphany, which is one reason why the cakes are so ostentatiously decorated. As for the bean or charm; the la fève is again part of the endlessly weaving theme that we find again and again in our folk traditions; that of the World Turned Upside Down. Whoever found it was tasked with providing the next year's cake but also became 'King for a Day', with all the blessings and responsibilities that that entailed. That this was a subversive act is suggested by another tradition; that of cutting the cake into the exact number of slices for those present, but also ensuring that there was an extra slice, known as "the share of God," "share of the Virgin Mary," or "share of the poor", and which was intended for the first poor person to arrive at the home, making it possible for the poorest of strangers to become king.

In England the 'Twelfth Cake' upheld a similar tradition but, uniquely, other items were often included, with whoever found the clove being “the villain, the twig, the fool, and the rag, the tart”. Anything spicy or hot, like ginger snaps and spiced ale, was considered proper Twelfth Night fare, recalling the costly spices brought by the Wise Men. Another English Epiphany dessert was the jam tart, but made into a six-point star for the occasion to symbolize the Star of Bethlehem, and thus called Epiphany tart. The discerning English cook sometimes tried to use thirteen different coloured jams on the tart on this day for luck, creating a dessert with the appearance of stained glass.” (The Old Foodie). As for the Twelfth Cake, it also contained a bean, but this would be in one side with a pea in the other. The man who found the bean, and the woman, who found the pea, would become King and Queen, or Lord and Lady of Misrule.

Le gâteau des Rois, by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1774

These days, the celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas having been discouraged during the Industrial Revolution (more important to work than feast), our Twelfth Night cake has largely been replaced by Christmas cake, and so subsumed into the shorter two or three day celebrations. No wonder that we often feel that we've eaten two weeks worth of food in one day at Christmas; we actually have!

The Epiphany Cake, and its loss from our own traditions, reminds me that I would like to reclaim my own eating from kronos (secular time) this year, and return it to kairos (sacred time). No wonder that we so often feel unsatisfied by the food we eat. We have forgotten how to 'draw out the king'.

References:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_cake

https://www.frenchasyoulikeit.com/galette-des-rois-a-sweet-french-tradition/

http://www.theoldfoodie.com/2007/01/twelfth-day-of-christmas.html?m=1

The Journey of the Magi ~ two poems for Epiphany

'The Journey of the Magi', Stefano di Giovanni, 1434. Wiki Commons

Today is Epiphany, a feast which celebrates the visit of the Three Wise Men, Magi, or Kings, to the Christ child, having followed the Star of Bethlehem to find him. There have been many artistic responses to this event and so, to begin today's sharings, and my posts for Epiphanytide, here are two poems; the first from Orkney poet, George Mackay Brown, and the second from one of the most influential poets of the 20th Century, T.S. Eliot.

This poem by George MacKay Brown has become a new favourite; not only does it imagine Epiphany as a season, rather than only one day, but it reimagines the Magi in a landscape that is familiar to me. As I have written before, these events are unfolding in all places, and the time is always now. As Greek philosoper Strabo of Amasia said, "(The) Magi keep the fire ever burning. And there, entering daily, they make their incantations..."
This is kairos, sacred time, and this is sacred space

A Calendar of Kings by George Mackay Brown

They endured a season
Of ice and silver swans.

Delicately the horses
Grazed among the snowdrops.

They traded for fish, wind
Fell upon crested waters.

Along their track
Daffodils lit a thousand tapers.

They slept among dews.
A dawn lark broke their dream.

For them, at solstice
The chalice of the sun spilled over.

The star was lost.
They rode between burnished hills.

A fiddle at a fair
Compelled the feet of harvesters.

A glim on their darkling road.
The star! It was their star.

In a sea village
Children brought apples to the horses.

They lit fires
By the carved stones of the dead.

A midwinter inn.
Here they unload their treasures.

George Mackay Brown from 'Following a Lark' 1996 and 'The Collected Poems' 2005.

'The Dream of the Magi', Cathedral of Saint-Lazare, France. 12th Century. 

And here is T.S. Eliot's response to the arrival of the Magi, and, more unsettlingly, to their journey home and its aftermath. They were forever changed by what they had seen and experienced, no longer at home in what had been. We might all wish, and not wish, to be so moved. Oh come, disturbing God!

The Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death?
There was a birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt.
I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

T.S. Eliot, from 'Collected Poems, 1909-1962'.

'The Journey of the Magi', James Tissot

References:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(holiday

Strabo of Amasia quote from Ben Wood @summeroflove85 on Twitter, accessed 6th January 2020. Thank you, Ben!

George Mackay Brown poem from http://michaelfarry.blogspot.com/2014/01/epiphany-poem.html?m=1

T.S. Eliot poem from http://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/the-journey-of-the-magi/

Walk of the Kings ~ The Ninth Day of Christmas

The Three Kings

My favourite way of emerging from the cosy nest of Christmas festivities is to take part in the Walk of the Kings, which raises money for the Rainbow Centre here in Folkestone. Not only does the event entail walking by the sea in January, which certainly wakes the mind and the body, but it also invites me to turn from my inner world to thinking about those who are more vulnerable in the town I live in than I am. It's a good way to start the year and this was my third time walking. It was the most beautiful sunny day and so I thought that I might share something of it with you.

We began our walk on the seafront at Hythe here on the Kent coast. This year our walking group was me, my friend Richard, and his grandchildren, Jack and Toby. A little later we were joined by Theresa and her lovely dog, Gibson.

The Rainbow Centre, which was founded in 1985 as the Folkestone Family Care Centre, changing its name to the Folkestone Rainbow Centre in 1992. The charity works to support and offer hope to individuals and families suffering deprivation in our local area. It does this through its homeless support service (including a winter shelter), the Shepway Foodbank, and FoodStop, a mobile soup and sandwich providing service that hopes to support those who are vulnerable but hard to reach with more traditional support, at least to begin with. The Rainbow Centre is a wonderful and heartening small charity and it feels important to support them.

Toby & Jack found 3 mermaid's purses!

But, as we have the company of children, our Walk of the Kings rarely involves just walking. This year Jack and Toby both found mermaid's purses; Toby found two! Mermaid's purses are the empty egg cases of sharks, skates, and rays. They are made of collagen protein strands and most look and feel quite leathery. The majority contain a single embryo and are deposited in kelp forests or on rocky seashores until ready to hatch. This can take anything from a few months to over a year!  They can be identified by their size and the shape of their 'horns'. I think that these are the egg-cases of the small-eyed ray. An exciting find!

At the tideline, Toby also found a crab shell!

And it was joyous to be outside, especially after far too many days of being indoors. We saw a cormorant sunning her wings, marvelled at the sparkle of granite rocks, and examined cuttlefish bones.

We walked past a beachfront house, all painted in seaside blue and white, whose wall was draped with Christmas holly and mistletoe. So lovely to see!

What a joyous sight! And I love too that this was on the wall at the end of their garden & far from the house itself. It felt like an offering of generosity and festive spirit to strangers; so much of what Christmastime is about.

And all the time the sea was beautifully blue. I feel blessed to live here. Even on this seemingly tame coast the sea is a wild being, ebbing and flowing, breathing out, breathing in.

Then we turned away from the sea and began to climb Folkestone's 'Zig Zag path', which means passing this quote from science fiction writer, H.G. Wells, who lived at Sandgate, very close to Folkestone, from 1901 to 1909; "It was one of those hot clear days that Folkestone sees so much of; every colour incredibly bright and every outline hard." This was certainly one of those days.

The Zig Zag path winds its way from the beach to the Leas, a Victorian-style promenade with a proper bandstand, managed flower beds, a giant chessboard, a concert hall, and a memorial to the victims of WWI which plays songs and poems from that era. The fence carries a tide of knitted poppies; red, white, and purple. It's very touching.

The Zig Zag path is formed from manmade rocks called 'Pulhamite', after the landscape gardeners, James Pulham & Sons, who built the path in the early 1920s. The work provided much needed employment for soldiers returning from the war. Pulhamite is basically rubble bound with special concrete that has glass and pottery mixed into it.

I love the Zig Zag path but I was very glad to reach the town beacon at the top!

Then it was off to the Rainbow Centre for bread & soup, plus a slice of traditional 'King Cake' ~ Galette des Rois (of which more in my next sharing), and a simple thanksgiving Epiphany service.

I want to end with a prayer from the Epiphany service which seems perfect for these times, no matter what our spiritual path.

The Pointed Epiphany Prayer

God of grace, thank you for every Epiphany that will happen today,
for every one who drops a weapon because there are no enemies,
for every one who breathes in the scent of cedar and is cleansed,
for every one who drops the heavy bundle of resentment,
for every one who is guided by generations as yet unborn,
for every one who is contented at the end of a journey,
for every one who falls on their knees before a baby,
for every one who senses the webs that connect us,
for every one who follows a sign from heaven,
for every one who remembers to give gifts,
for every one who is bowled over by love,
for every one who recognises the holy,
for every one who dances with joy,
for every one who says a prayer,
for every one with stars in their eyes.
Amen.

I am chuffed to say that I was able to raise £115+ for the Rainbow Centre, to be added to the amounts raised by my fellow walkers.  Thank you so much to everyone who sponsored me. It really helped me to keep on walking on my wobbly way. And what a blessing it is, always, to turn for a while from our own worries and concerns and offer the hand of friendship and solidarity to another. I hope for many more opportunities to do so in the year ahead. And I hope too that it will be less and less needed as the seed of justice grows.

And I will just add an extra thank you to Jack and Toby who ensured, as ever, that I returned home with my rucksack filled with mermaids' purses, crab shells, damp gull feathers, and seashells. What could be lovelier? Life is full of treasure just waiting to be found.

To learn more about the Rainbow Centre visit https://www.rainbow-centre.org

Now We Live by Starlight ~ the Eighth Day of Christmas

Star of Bethlehem flowering at the 1,000 year church, April 2017

As we come closer to Epiphanytide, which begins on the evening of January 5th; the Twelfth Day of Christmas, we begin to live by starlight. If we take our Christmas decorations down then our homes can feel stripped bare and empty, cold as we sometimes imagine stars to be. But we also become open to the sky. There is nothing between us and forever, and eternity is at our fingertips.

To sink ever more deeply with our starlit journey we might watch this beautiful timelapse film by Harley Grady.

Stars have become more and more important to my own spiritual path and I hope to share something of that over Epiphanytide if I can find the words. But, for now, I want to share something of the star that is most important in the coming days; the Star of Bethlehem. 

Epiphany remembers the visit of the Wise Men, or Kings, to the Christ child, having followed the Star of Bethlehem to find him. There is a belief that our Christmas decorations, especially those representing stars or light, shouldn't be taken down before Epiphany Eve as it might prevent the Wise Men from finding their way. I love that, in folk belief, there is only now; the Wise Men are always travelling, and each Epiphany they arrive, with a little help from the twinkling star trail we put out for them. This is no small thing; we are not irrelevant, no matter how small we feel. Our smallest action is the pivot around which the universe spins. And when our fairylights have been put away and the stars have shifted, there is a little white flower who comes to remind us that that remains true, no matter what.

It's said that the Star of Bethlehem first appeared on the night of Christ's birth to guide the Wise Men, whose journey was made complicated by their maps and charts, to the child. When its work ended it burst into thousands of brilliant fragments and fell to earth. Where it came to ground a blanket of milk-white flowers grew.

You will know that you have found Star of Bethlehem when you see a flower with six white petals surrounding six stamens, each with a yellow anther. They bloom in the spring from early March until late May or early June. The flowers open in the early morning and are usually closed by noon revealing a beautiful green stripe on their underside, hence some of their common names; sleepydick, nap-at-noon, star-at-noon, johnny-go-to-bed-at-noon, and eleven o'clock ladies. When the flowers have died a three-celled seed capsule forms containing several black seeds.

Star of Bethlehem, Wiki Commons

Her genus name, 'ornithogalum', comes from the Greek words 'ornis' for 'bird' and 'gala', meaning 'milk', and was named and described by Dioscorides (40 to 90CE) in his 'De Materia Medica' due to her abundance of white flowers that 'when opened look a lot like milk'. 

In herbal healing she is known as the 'comforter' and is a gentle companion in sitting with the after-effects of shock, even those received long ago in childhood. She has been described as the 'Guardian of Grieving', and used in the treatment of those who are suffering from suicidal depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, offering a light to lead the afflicted out of the darkness. Indeed, she does that work for us all, blooming at the beginning of spring and reminding us of the need to come into the light after the dark winter months. She is the way-shower, a guide for the lost, just as she guided the Wise Men through the vast silence of the desert. Generous indeed for a star who has herself has been broken into pieces; the archetypal 'wounded healer', just as Christ is. I would never trust a spiritual path that didn't know how to honour the parts in all of us that are broken.

I find the image of the star fallen to Earth deeply moving and have often thought of her as a teacher, showing us that it's possible to follow diverse spiritual paths, whilst still being part of one wild and beautiful truth. In her myriad mirrored fragments, her many white petals, her brilliance of being, the Star of Bethlehem reflects them all. There is no 'other', just broken parts of one great beating heart. Perhaps that's why she is sometimes called the 'Reconciliation Star', the star of at-one-ment. And it does feel that there is much to reconcile, and to atone for. There is mending to be done, but we have our guide and she is pulsating with the energy that drives the universe towards justice.

Star Circle, Wiki Commons

But it doesn't feel that there is too much justice in the world just now; not when the President of the United States, who we might remind ourselves is also made of stars, appears to be wilfully driving us towards WWWIII, a war which many of our sisters and brothers would be justified in saying started many years ago. The world truly does feel shattered into a thousand sharp and ragged pieces.

Three years ago, in the wake of several star-shattering world events, a poem came whilst I was writing about the healing properties and folklore of this little white flower. Much of this piece of writing is based on that. If you would like to read it you can find it here. I continue to pray, as I did then, that by the time she returns in the spring there will be much healing between us to be held out in offering to her. Epiphanytide is our opportunity to realign ourselves with the star who, like Christ, fell to Earth to help us mend.

Star of Bethlehem is tired 

of dragging around the baggage 

that we try to hide, 

divisions that won't be reconciled, 

the willful non-seeing of the so-called wise.

Wakes bright with morning, 

asleep by noon, 

offers guidance with maps and tea; 

pours milk, leaves not bags, 

her best bone china 

slips from her exhausted hands, 

smashes into a thousand shards of stars 

on her kitchen floor, 

reads the auguries in their constellations.

Weeps for the weight of what she sees 

swept under the carpet. 

Star of Bethlehem carries diversity 

as a prayer in her shopping bag, 

walks with Jah, Allah, Shekinah 

wearing goose feathers in her hair 

in the stews of the Liberty.

Keeps a torch by the back door, 

shines a light on intruders ~ 

Guantanamo, Yemen, Syria, 

the housing of the poor, 

a nail bomb on Electric Avenue, 

knows that she can't take much more. 

No amount of bleach in her bucket 

will make this pure.

No amount of soap will scrub this whole.

And her batteries are running out. 

She may have to brave the dark. 

Star of Bethlehem hangs her head

in the churchyard 

closes in on herself at shadow fall, 

offers her flesh for the breaking of bread,

ties her scarf more tightly round her head.

Tuber or tumour, hate or hope. 

The murder of the innocents, 

child radicalised, 

drowned on the refugee boat, 

finding belonging in the EDL, 

bleeding out in the stairwell in Peckham Rye.

Herod turns his head, shuts his eyes, 

she opens her petals wide. 

And she is growing wild, 

escaping the confines of the flower bed.

Sinking her roots into holy ground, 

gathering up the pieces that she let slip, 

knows it's time to get a grip. 

She weeps for mercy, grieves for grace, 

what we might have been, what we are. 

Yet still she loves the pilgrim soul in us, 

the spark that journeyed 

from the furthest star 

and fell to earth forged in fire. 

She puts the kettle on. 

~ Jacqueline Durban, 2017

Star of Bethlehem flowering at the 1,000 year church, 2017

References:

http://radicalhoneybee.blogspot.com/2017/06/star-of-bethlehem-for-all-who-are-lost.html?m=1