Wild Wales: In the Footsteps of George Borrow

When I was about twelve years old I used to sit in school wanting to be outside walking on the hills with the wind in my hair –  far, far away from the stifling confinement of the classroom. Somewhere I came across a quotation from a book called, mysteriously, Lavengro, written by the 19th century writer, George Borrow. I’d never heard of him before, but meticulously copied out his words in my school exercise book:

George Borrow

"There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?"

Much later I was to learn that George Borrow walked all over the land in the days before it was sliced up by motorways, and gathered his adventures into a few memorable books.  In the words of an early biographer, “All his major works are journeys, interspersed with travellers’ tales, strange encounters, and graphic scenes in taverns and hostelries along his way.” He chronicled “his wanderings in green lanes, his "love of Nature unconfined," his acquaintance with the gypsies, his passion for The Wild.” Borrow was deeply inspired by a landscape free from “dark satanic mills,” and by the gypsies he met, the Romani people who made the road their home. One of them gave him those words I wrote in my school book.

In 1862, Borrow transformed his notebooks written on a walk through Wales into a book, Wild Wales, which today is considered to be one of the best accounts of the country in that era. This was in my mind last Sunday when David and I stayed at the George Borrow Inn in mid-Wales,  a 17th century hotel in the foothills of the Cambrian Mountains, perched on the edge of what Borrow called “a deep and awful chasm, at the bottom of which chafed and foamed the Rheidol.”

He recounted staying there on a “rainy and boisterous night which was succeeded by a bright and beautiful morning,” and oddly enough we had the same weather:  We awoke to a single, miraculous day of pure sunlight, the only one in an endless march of dull grey skies. As soon as the sun burst over the hills we drove a few miles to Devil’s Bridge, where Borrow had walked on another November morning over 150 years ago, as he described in his book with Gothic relish:

To view it properly, and the wonders connected with it, you must pass over the bridge above it, and descend a precipitous dingle on the eastern side till you come to a small platform in a crag. Below you now is a frightful cavity, at the bottom of which the waters of the Monks’ River, which comes tumbling from a glen to the east, whirl, boil, and hiss in a horrid pot or cauldron, called in the language of the country Twll yn y graig, or the hole in the rock, in a manner truly tremendous. On your right is a slit, probably caused by volcanic force, through which the waters after whirling in the cauldron eventually escape. The slit is wonderfully narrow, considering its altitude which is very great — considerably upwards of a hundred feet. Nearly above you, crossing the slit, which is partially wrapt in darkness, is the far-famed bridge, the Bridge of the Evil Man . . .

Gaze on these objects, namely, the horrid seething pot or cauldron, the gloomy volcanic slit, and the spectral, shadowy Devil’s Bridge for about three minutes, allowing a minute to each, then scramble up the bank and repair to your inn, and have no more sight-seeing that day, for you have seen enough. And if pleasant recollections do not haunt you through life of the noble falls and the beautiful wooded dingles to the west of the bridge of the Evil One, and awful and mysterious ones of the monks’ boiling cauldron, the long, savage, shadowy cleft, and the grey, crumbling, spectral bridge, I say boldly that you must be a very unpoetical person indeed.

Since we were made of sterner stuff than to retire to the inn for the rest of the day, we made our way to the wild beauty of the Hafod Uchtryd Estate in the Ystwyth Valley. Less dramatic than the Devil’s Bridge, it is a remote and lovely place, originally the hunting-grounds of Welsh chieftains. In later times it became home to the landed gentry, where splendid house-parties were held, its walls resounding to the music of harpers and the poems of bards. Sadly, in the year 1807, a terrible fire broke out and burned it to the ground. Gone forever was its magnificent octagonal library full of irreplaceable treasures and rare books, including manuscripts on natural history, medicine, poetry and literature, in Welsh, French and Latin, some dating from the Middle Ages. Borrow remembered this tragic event on his visit:

This fire is generally called the great fire of Hafod, and some of those who witnessed it have been heard to say that its violence was so great that burning rafters mixed with flaming books were hurled high above the summits of the hills. The loss of the house was a matter of triviality compared with that of the library.

Today the estate is owned by the Forestry Commission who are working at restoring the original landscaped walks. Borrow described it very much as we experienced it on Monday:

The scenery was exceedingly beautiful. Below me was a bright green valley, at the bottom of which the Ystwyth ran brawling, now hid amongst groves, now showing a long stretch of water. Beyond the river to the east was a noble mountain, richly wooded.

Since he too visited it in November, he must have seen the glorious colours of the autumn trees, the dying fall of a bygone era . . .and maybe also a red kite, wheeling through a hallowed sky of impossible, infinite blue.

 Photos by David J. Watkins

Touched by the Flame

I recently returned from Co. Sligo, a part of Ireland its most famous poet, WB Yeats, called "The Land of Hearts Desire." The name recalls those evocative Irish names for the Otherworld: Land of the Ever-Living, Land-under-Wave, the Land of Light, and it's easy to see why. This is a place where farmers will not cut down a hawthorn for fear of offending the faeries to whom these trees are sacred; where, if you're sick, you are more likely to visit a neighbour who "has the cure" than see a doctor.

Above all, it's a land where the presence of the Shining Ones can be sensed everywhere. The old tales tell how the race of Immortals called the Tuatha De Danann – the People of the goddess Danu – lived in Ireland thousands of years until they were conquered by the invading Celts. They struck a bargain with the newcomers: Rather than leave the land they loved, they would go into the caves, springs, and chambered cairns, and live their lives within the "Hollow Hills." Manannán mac Lir, the sea god, spread a Cloak of Invisibility about them so that they could not be seen at those times when they emerged into the upper world.

But did they really disappear, or was it that our perceptions became so dulled by material things that our natural ability to perceive the world of Spirit became atrophied? For those who never lost their vision of the true reality, like Yeats’ fellow poet, A.E., (George Russell) the gods never really left at all:

"So did I feel one warm summer day lying idly on the hillside, not then thinking of anything but the sunlight, and how sweet it was to drowse there, when, suddenly, I . . . heard first a music as of bells going away, away into that wondrous underland whither, as legend relates, the Danaan gods withdrew; and then the heart of the hills was open to me, and I knew there was no hill for those who were there, and they were unconscious of the ponderous mountain piled above the palaces of light, and the winds were sparkling and diamond clear, yet full of color as an opal, as they glittered through the valley, and I knew the Golden Age was all about me, and it was we who had been blind to it but that it had never passed away from the world.”

The Shining Ones are still with us: It is we who have banished them into the depths of the collective unconscious. But if we choose to open our minds, hearts and all our senses to the living presence of Spirit that is all around us and within us on our beautiful planet home, then the Land of Heart's Desire will reveal itself to us in all its beauty and power, as surely as it did for AE, when he wrote:
 

For the great gates of the mountains have opened once again,
And the sound of song and dancing fall upon the ears of men,
And the Land of Youth lies gleaming, flushed with rainbow light and mirth,
And the old enchantment lingers in the honey-heart of earth.

(Paintings by A.E.)

The Faery Lore of Foxgloves

Foxgloves

Faery gloves

Faery caps and bells -

Foxgloves are the Folks' Gloves,

the Good Folk, that is,

and you'd better not forget it if you think to cut them down.

In the Faery Glen
on the Isle of Skye,
foxgloves stand like watchful sentinels of the Hidden People.
On Highland hillsides they march in crimson,
like the hosts of trooping faeries.

In Ireland’s wooded hollows,
glowing purple in the dusk,
foxglove is the lus na mban sidhe,
the Plant of the Faery Woman.

In Donegal, the blossoms are meíríní púca, Puck's fingers,
or méaracan sídhe, Shilly Thimbles, Thimbles of the Sídhe.
When a foxglove bows its head, a faery is passing by.
Faeries have been seen dancing beneath them in the Welsh Marches, not so long ago.
And in Ireland, according to a story told to Yeats, they often hide under the leaves
where the casual observer mistakes their red caps for the crimson bells.

Foxgloves are also called bee-catchers and beehives in the West Country.
It is said that the path of brown and white spots on the floor of each bell are
the marks of elven fingers,
designed to lead the bee towards the nectar.


Whoever was responsible,
foxgloves have certainly been designed
with the foraging bee in mind.
Each bell has a projecting lower lip for a landing pad,
from which the bee can proceed down the illuminated runway.
The anthers of the stamens lie flat along the inside "roof" of the bell
so that its pollen rubs off on the bee’s back.
The bee then transfers the pollen to the next flower enabling it to produce seeds:
1 to 2 million from each plant.

Foxgloves have a darker side:
They belong to the dead
whose blood and bones make fertile soil.
So their blossoms are also
Dead Man's Thimbles,
Dead Man’s Bellows, (the phallus)
or, in Scotland, ciochan nan cailleachan marblia:
Dead old woman's paps.
In Wales they are Dead Men’s Bells.
If you hear them ringing, you will not be long for this world.

Meddle with a foxglove
and you may become faery-struck.
Yet it can also cure any misfortune caused by the faeries.
If a child is Taken and a squalling changeling left in its place,
place foxglove leaves beneath its crib.
The faeries will bring back the stolen child.

In Ireland it is lus-mor, the Great Plant,
because of its healing virtues.
And in Wales it was one of the healing herbs
taught by the faery woman of Llyn y Fan Fach to her half-human sons,
who became the famous Physicians of Myddfai. Here foxgloves are bysedd ellyllon, Fingers of the Elves.

Foxgloves are also Witches' Fingers,
once prized by the wise women of old,
for the treatment of sores, ulcers and wounds, and all manner of ills
from the common cold to the King's Evil,
but especially in the treatment of heart conditions.

It was a wise woman of Shropshire who taught one Dr. Withering
how to use it for cardiac complaints in the 18th century.
Today foxgloves are cultivated on huge farms in the eastern United States
solely for medicinal purposes.
Digitalis, its botanical name, means "fingers."
Whose fingers?

Foxgloves by Mary Webb

  The foxglove bells, with lolling tongue,
Will not reveal what peals were rung
In Faery, in Faery,
A thousand ages gone.
All the golden clappers hang
As if but now the changes rang;
Only from the mottled throat
Never any echoes float.
Quite forgotten, in the wood,
Pale, crowded steeples rise;
All the time that they have stood
None has heard their melodies.
Deep, deep in wizardry
All the foxglove belfries stand.
Should they startle over the land,
None would know what bells they be.
Never any wind can ring them,
Nor the great black bees that swing them–
Every crimson bell, down-slanted,
Is so utterly enchanted.

The Green Isles of Enchantment

Pink thrift on St David's Head

When Spring returned to West Wales this year after a seemingly endless grey winter, we headed down to the Pembrokeshire coast to bathe all our senses in sun, wind and sea. All the wild flowers seemed to have arrived at once. Primroses cascaded down the cliffs like pools of morning light, and bluebells lined the path;  translucent white campions and clumps of nodding pink thrift turned the wild shoreline into a rock garden, and we came upon a whole meadow of the blue flowers called spring squill. 

Spring Squill and Buttercups

I recalled the poem by the Welsh poet Thomas Telynog Evans, which captures the startling contrast of the seasons in this land, and indeed all the lands of the Celtic Northwest fringe:


All the sweetness of nature was buried in black winters grave,
and the wind sings a sad lament with its cold plaintive cry;
but oh, the teeming summer will come bringing life in its arms,
and will strew rosy flowers on the face of hill and dale.

In lovely harmony the wood has put on its green mantle,
and summer is on its throne, playing its string-music;
the willow, whose harp hung silent when it was withered in winter,
now gives forth its melody.
Hush! Listen! The world is alive!

Looking northwards to Strumble Head

As we neared St Davids Head, misty blue islands came into view on the horizon, whose traditions remind us that the realm of Spirit is very much alive here, too. These are the Gwerddonau Llion, the Green Meadows of the Sea, otherworld islands akin to Avalon and the Irish Blessed Isles. Sometimes they are visible to the eyes of mortals for a brief space, when suddenly they disappear. There are traditions from the early 19th century of sailors who actually went ashore on these islands, but on returning to their boats, were amazed to see them instantly vanish behind them. Other tales tell that those who visit for what seems like a few hours will return to find that whole centuries have passed away.

These islands are the abode of the faery race called Plant Rhys Ddwfn, (plant hrees thoovn) the Children of Rhys of the Deep. A small, handsome tribe, they used to come to the mainland to attend the markets at Milford Haven and Laugharne. They made their purchases without speaking,  and always left the exact sum required even thought they never asked the price of anything. To ordinary eyes they were invisible, but from time to time, some keen-sighted persons caught the odd glimpse of them.

One of the Plant Rhys Ddwfn by Corbistiger

These faeries grew certain strange herbs on their island which kept it hidden from mortal eyes. The only other place these herbs flourished was on a certain spot in the churchyard of St David’s Cathedral. One day, a man called Gruffydd ab Einion (Griffith ab Eye-nee-on) stepped on this spot and the islands sprang into view. He tried to sail out to where he had seen them, but as soon as he put out to sea, they vanished again. Then it occurred to him to cut the turf on which he had stepped and place it in his boat, whereupon the islands appeared once more and he was able to go ashore. The faeries welcomed him warmly, showed him the wonders of their home, and sent him back to the mainland loaded with gifts. But they made him leave the piece of turf behind. After that he became a lifelong friend of the Children of Rhys of the Deep, and the gold they gave him made him the richest man in Wales.

One of these islands, Grassholm, a huge rock now haunted by birds, is said to be Gwales, where the Assembly of the Wondrous Head came, according to the story of Branwen, Daughter of Llyr in the collection of Welsh medieval tales called the Mabinogi. The head belonged to the giant Brân, one of the Old Gods of Britain. He had perished in a bloody battle with the Irish, but his severed head was able to speak, and it ordered his surviving followers to carry it to London and bury it under the White Mount, where it would henceforth safeguard the country from all invaders.

Whitesands Beach

The Assembly journeyed back across the Irish Sea and came first to Harlech Castle where they sat at a magical feast for seven years, entertained by the music of the birds of Rhiannon. Then they sailed southwards to the island of Gwales where they entered a great and resplendent hall with two open doors and one closed, which Brân forbade them to open. Here they spent eighty years in joyous revelry, unaware of the passing of time, all their troubles magically forgotten, while the head of Brân proved as jovial a companion as when it was attached to his body. But of course one of their number, Heilyn son of Gwyn, disobeyed Brân’s instruction.

“‘Shame on my beard,’ said he, ‘if I don’t open the door and find out whether it is true what is said about it.'
 He opened the door, and looked out to Cornwall and over Aber Henvelen. And when he looked, suddenly everything they had ever lost – loved ones and companions, and all the bad things that had ever happened to them; and most of all the loss of their king – became as clear as if it had been rushing in towards them.”

Time poured in as if from a breached dam, and they left the eternal island to trudge eastwards to London and bury the now silent head, which came to be called one of the Three Fortunate Concealments of Britain, according to the Triads. Actually someone dug it up later, and his name was Arthur, but that, as they say, is another story.

The Gates of Annwn

In wintertime Wales, the gates of Annwn are open wide. The origin of the word Annwn, (ah-noon) sometimes found in its older form, Annwfyn, (anoo-vin) is disputed. It may mean ‘the deep,’ for it is often located below the earth or beneath the sea. Or it may derive from ande-dubnos, a common Gallo-Brithonic word that literally meant ‘underworld.’ It might mean the ‘in-world’ or even, the ‘un-world,’ a negative image of the place we call home.

Welsh tales and legends describe Annwn as a classical Celtic otherworld paradise. It is the abode of the goddess Rhiannon with her magical birds, which have the power to wake the dead and lull the living to sleep. A medieval text calls Morgen le Fay ‘Margen, dwywes o annwfyn’ – Morgen, Goddess of Annwn, suggesting Annwn and Avalon are one and the same place. King Arthur and a host of warriors once sailed there in his ship, Prydwen, in search of a wonder-working cauldron guarded by nine maidens. They found a dream-like landscape of faery castles glimmering with beauty and danger. None but seven returned from this voyage through ‘perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.’

Much could be written about Annwn, but in this post I want to share with you a few of the magical places in the Welsh landscape which are traditional entrances to this mysterious realm.

Pentre Ifan
Up on the hills above Cardigan Bay, the great cromlech of Pentre Ifan was once known as the womb of the goddess, Ceridwen. This is holy ground: framed by the pillar stones is Carn Ingli, the sacred Mount of Angels, while below, the dark and ancient woodland closes around the Druid’s Cave. An avenue of stones is thought to have once wound up to the cromlech, which back then would have been covered with earth, a rounded belly within which Druid neophytes, perhaps aided by an intoxicating brew, might have experienced initiation into the depths of Annwn.


Grassholm

 Caer Sidi, the ‘Faery Castle,’ one of the citadels of Annwn, has been associated with the small island of Gwales, the archaic name for Grassholm, which lies eight miles off the coast of Pembrokeshire. Well into the 19th century it was said to be populated by a host of faeries and to have an occasional habit of disappearing beneath the sea. The whole of this coastline is abundant in stories of the ‘Green Meadows of Enchantment’ or ‘Green Islands of the Faeries.’ This may have been because Grassholm is the most westerly point of Wales and also lies opposite the Preseli Hills, where it is believed the bluestones that went to build Stonehenge were quarried in the Neolithic era. Now it is a bird sanctuary on which it is forbidden to land – a temenos set apart for Rhiannon’s charges.

Ffynnone

The waterfall and pool of Ffynnone in the Cych Valley, also in Pembrokeshire, is a place where anything might happen – as once it did when Arawn, King of Annwn, irrupted out of the Underworld with his baying pack of red-eared, white hounds, in the story of Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed. Pwyll ended up going down to Annwn which he found to be a most delightful place:

"He approached the court and inside he could see sleeping quarters, halls and chambers and the most beautifully ornamented buildings anyone had seen…The hall was set in order and then he could see entering a warband and hosts – the most splendid and best equipped troop that anyone had ever seen; the queen was with them, the fairest woman anyone had ever seen, dressed in glittering gold brocaded garment…And they passed the time in food and drink, with songs and entertainment. Of all the courts he had seen on earth, this was the court best supplied with food and drink, gold vessels and royal treasures."

Llyn y Fan Fach

A young shepherd met a beautiful faery woman, one of the Gwragedd Annwn, or Ladies of the Lake, who arose from the dark waters of Llyn y Fan Fach in Carmarthenshire. He took her back to his home in the nearby village of Myddfai where they were wed, but she warned him that if he ever struck her three times, she would go back to her underwater kingdom. She bore him three sons, but over the years he thoughtlessly struck her three times, and so she returned forever to Annwn. But when her sons were grown, she taught them the healing powers of herbs, and they grew up to become the celebrated doctors known throughout medieval Wales as the Physicians of Myddfai. Descendants of this renowned family were still practicing medicine in the 18th century and there is at least one herbalist in Dyfed today who claims descent from the famous family.

Stackpole

It’s not often that men of the church spend time in Annwn, but this is what happened to Bishop Elidyr  of St Davids Cathedral in Pembrokeshire, according to the great medieval chronicler, Gerald of Wales. When the bishop was a little lad, he ran away from the monks who were constantly giving him beatings, and hid in a hollow bank by a stream near Stackpole in the southern part of the county. Before too long, two little men led him through an underground passage into a land of great beauty, yet where no sun or moon ever shone. After spending many seasons of delight here, Elidyr grew homesick and went home to visit his mother. But his mother’s eyes glinted with greed when he told her of the riches there. She asked him to bring her a gift of gold and so Elidyr returned with a golden ball belonging to the king’s son. As he crossed the threshold of his house, his foot stuck fast, and he fell, dropping the ball which was seized by two angry little men. He was never able to return to that land again.

Glas Llyn

One of the Welsh names for the faeries is Bendith y Mamau, the Blessing of the Mothers. In the green fields bordering the lake of Glas Llyn in North Wales, a shepherd called Meirig was tending his sheep when he came upon a slender faery woman dressing her baby. He saw that she had hardly anything to protect the child from the icy wind blowing over the lake, so he took off his shirt and gave it to her. The woman thanked him and vanished, but every night afterwards, the shepherd found a piece of silver placed in an old clog in his cabin. He became very wealthy, married a lovely girl, and together they enjoyed the nightly gifts of the faeries for the rest of their lives, as ‘Bendith y Mamau was poured down upon the family, and all their descendants.’

The Berwyn Mountains

These deep enfolded hills of northeast Wales are named for Gwyn ap Nudd, a faery King of Annwn. (Ber = bre = hill and Wyn = Gwyn.) Gwyn is a hunter who leads the great cavalcade of spirits through the skies on stormy winter nights to gather up the souls of the dead and lead them to their home beyond this world. Like Arawn, he too is accompanied by the Cwn Annwn, a pack of white hounds with red ears. His palace lies within one of the Berwyns: perhaps underneath the energetically powerful stone circle of Moel Ty Uchaf on a hill above Llandrillo.

Gwyn was invoked by Welsh seers when they wanted to enter the hidden realms of Annwn and consult the spirits for divination. According to a 14th century Latin manuscript against divination, these Welsh “soothsayers,” known as awenyddion would petition him with these words:

“Ad regem Eumenidium et reginam eius: Gwynn ap Nwdd qui es ultra in silvis pro amore concubine tue permitte nos venire domum.”

To the King of Spirits, and to his Queen: Gwyn ap Nudd, you who are yonder in the forest, for love of your mate, permit us to enter your dwelling.

If you would enter the Gates of Annwn, just be sure you know how to safely return!

Journey to some of the most magical places in Wales in 2012:
Visit Spirit of Wales: Land of Myth and Magic

Faeries and Berries

Back in Wales after summer travels, I was seized with an obsession to pick berries. Rather than staying inside to catch up with the mountains of email that demanded attention, I found myself, basket in hand, tramping through the lanes and coastal cliff paths, determined to fill them up with as many ripe blackberries, elderberries, sloes, wild damsons, hips, haws, and rowan berries as I could. The overt reason was to make jams and jellies, but since I don't even eat the sugary stuff, (I leave that to David) I was merely obeying the irresistible atavistic impulse to gather as much free food as possible before the glistening hedgerows turn into the khaki ranks of autumn's army.

Standing at the garden table up to my elbows in purple juice, beating off the wasps who have their own agenda when it comes to berries, I thought about the faery-lore of my bountiful hoard.

The spirit of the elder is an old woman, the Elder-Mother, who lives in the trunk of this bushy tree. In Ireland elder was regarded as highly sacred, and it was forbidden to break even one twig. But in Lincolnshire you could barter for wood from the “Old Lady” or “Old Girl” by saying: “Old Woman, give me some of thy wood and I will give thee some of mine when I grow into a tree.” If you bathe your eyes in the green juice of the wood, you will gain the second sight. And if you stand under an elder-tree at Samhain in Scotland, you can see the faery host riding by. Elderberries plucked on Midsummer’s Eve confer magical powers, but since they generally don't ripen until August, it's a safe bet that doesn't happen very often. 

Within the blackthorn tree lives the lunantishee, a thin, wiry old man with pointed ears, long teeth, arms and fingers – a personification of the sharp thorn itself. He will not allow a stick to be cut either on the 11th of May or November (the old Beltaine and Samhain dates.) To do so is bound to bring misfortune. The thorns also protect the white flowers in the spring, which ripen into the black sour sloes, an ancestor of our orchard plums. Blackthorn’s sister is the hawthorn, whom the Irish have always recognised as a faery tree. Hawthorns were often referred to as "gentle bushes" after the custom of not naming faeries directly out of respect. Solitary thorns were known as the faeries' trysting trees, as they frequently grow on barrows and tumps, or at crossroads –  typical "thin" places in the landscape. To sit beneath the hawthorn tree on Beltaine Eve pretty much guarantees a sight of the fairy cavalcade riding out into our world at this liminal time.

We don't hear much about the bramble faery who scatters her gleaming jewels throughout our hedgerows with such profligacy, but mothers used to warn their children not to eat any blackberries after Michelmas as the faeries had blighted them – which no doubt served to safeguard their offspring from the ills of eating mouldy berries. But rowan berries are said to be the food of the high faery race known as the Tuatha De Danaan in Ireland. In olden times anyone who ate one of these magical berries remained free of sickness. An old person who ate them became young again, and they bestowed unsurpassed beauty on any maiden. Despite its virtues, the rowan-tree faery is an unprepossessing fellow: thick-boned, large-nosed, crooked in the teeth, and with one red eye in a black face. It is said that the Welsh used to brew an excellent ale from the berries, the secret of which is sadly now lost. Herbalist John Evelyn seems to confirm this in his Sylva: or, A Discourse of Forest-Trees:"Ale and beer brewed with these berries, being ripe, is an incomparable drink, familiar in Wales, where this tree is reputed so sacred, that there is not a churchyard without one of them

planted in it..."

I ended up making pots and pots of jellies, both blackberry-apple and wild damson, sieved through muslin and hung over the bath for two days; hedgerow jam – a brilliant tangy concoction made from crab-apples, rose-hips,  a few rowan berries, sloes, blackberries and raspberries from the garden; and froze the rest for future crumbles and pies. 

I also left some outside on the doorstep for the faeries, as wise old Jill did in Walter de la Mare’s poem:

BERRIES

There was an old woman went blackberry picking

Along the hedges from Weep to Wicking. -

Half a pottle- no more she had got,

When out steps a Fairy from her green grot;

 And says, 'Well, Jill, Would 'ee pick mo?'

And Jill, she curtseys, and looks just so.

‘Be off,' says the Fairy, 'As quick as you can,

Over the meadows to the little green lane

That dips to the hayfields of Farmer Grimes:

I've berried those hedges a score of times;

Bushel on bushel I'll promise 'ee, Jill,

This side of supper if 'ee pick with a will.'

She glints very bright, and speaks her fair;

Then lo and behold! She had faded in air.

 Be sure Old Goodie she trots betimes

Over the meadows to Farmer Grimes.

And never was queen with jewelry rich

As those same hedges from twig to ditch;

Like Dutchmen's coffers, fruit, thorn, and flower -

They shone like William and Mary's bower.

And be sure Old Goodie went back to Weep,

So tired with her basket she scarce could creep.

 When she comes in the dusk to her cottage door,

There's Towser wagging as never before,

To see his Missus so glad to be

Come from her fruit-picking back to he.

As soon as next morning dawn was grey,

The pot on the hob was simmering away;

And all in a stew and a hugger-mugger

Towser and Jill a-boiling of sugar,

And the dark clear fruit that from Faerie came,

For syrup and jelly and blackberry jam.

Twelve jolly gallipots Jill put by;

And one little teeny one, one inch high;

And that she's hidden a good thumb deep,

Half way over from Wicking to Weep.

What the Druids Knew

Ask the wild bees what the Druids knew. - Fiona Macleod

Lammas is a time of many harvests, not least the golden bounty of the bees. The hidden valleys of West Wales have long been havens for bee-keeping.

The first name that this island bore,
before it was taken or settled; 

Myrddin's Enclosure.
And after it was taken and settled,
the Island of Honey.

We have our own three hives up by the pear trees, sheltered by the holly hedge. On sunny days our garden sounds like Yeats’ 'bee-loud glade.' 

On Sunday we collected the first honey of the year – the result of a miraculous alchemy in which bees turn the nectar of hundreds of flowers into sweet golden syrup.

In Scotland’s western isles, people once talked of 'the secret knowledge of the bees,' for these tiny creatures were thought to embody the ancient wisdom of the Druids.

So what did the Druids know? Bees have long been considered divine messengers from the gods. And until quite recently in the Highlands and Islands, people thought that, when in sleep, trance or death, the soul left the body in the form of a bee – a belief that has clear druidic origins. Druids were trained in the art of the ‘soul-flight,’ by which they could journey to the Otherworld for knowledge from the spirits. They would probably have endorsed the tenet beloved of the mystery schools of the Near East: Si sapis, sis apis! – If you would be wise, be a bee!

Perhaps they also carried forth the tradition of the Great Goddess, for bees, whose lives are organised entirely around a single queen, have been sacred to the Divine Feminine for thousands of years, in ancient civilizations from Babylon to Rome. Bees were revered for their ability to pollinate flowers and crops, increasing the abundance of the Earth. The cultivation of honey was regarded as a sacred charge carried out with great reverence and ritual for it was seen as a precious gift from the Mother herself.

In the classical world, priestesses of many aspects of the Divine Feminine, including Rhea, Cybele and Demeter, were called 'melissae', which means 'honey-bees', for they served the Goddess as Queen Bee. At the Ephesian temple of Artemis, the melissae were accompanied by castrated priests who represented male bees or drones. Aphrodite’s shrine on Mount Eryx was shaped like a honeycomb, considered by the Pythagoreans to be a symbol of her qualities of love and harmony, because of its perfect hexagonal shape.

Our honey bees were somnolent in the warmth of the mellow August sun, and did not protest when David removed the frames of honeycomb, heavy and bulging with honey, each cell meticulously capped and sealed with wax.

In Wales the bee was said to have been brought by the old sow-goddess, Hen Wen (the Old White One) who dropped three grains of wheat and three bees in the county of Gwent, which has since produced the best wheat and the best honey in the land.

In the Welsh tale of Culhwch and Olwen, the young hero must perform many impossible tasks before he can win the hand of the giant’s daughter, Olwen White-Track. One of these is to gather 'honey that is nine times sweeter than the honey of the virgin swarm, without scum or bees, to make bragget for the feast.' Bragget is a drink made from honey and spiced ale.

My job was to scrape the wax caps off the honeycomb to reveal the golden treasure within – a sticky business! Then David spun each frame in a cylindrical tank to extract the honey, and when it was full, we filtered it through a couple of sieves into a settling tank. The rich golden stream flowed out like a river.

In early Ireland, the Bards sang of Land-under-Wave, the Otherworld country of the gods, where

'Rivers pour forth a stream of honey
In the land of Manannán son of Lír.'

This was the land where Celtic warriors hoped to live when they had passed from this world, where they could feast, carouse, and drink unlimited quantities of mead. Mead, made from fermented honey, was the drink of heroes and kings: the royal hall of Tara was called the ‘mead-circling house.' But it was not only for the rich: An Irish hermit who lived in the woods celebrated his simple life among the swarms of bees, whom he called, 'the little musicians of the world.' Their symphonies entertained him while he drank his fill of honey-wine flavoured with hazel-nuts.

No mead for us, but jars of the sweet stuff for our breakfast toast – and hopefully, enough wax left over to make candles. This morning the waxy cappings were returned to the bees so that they could clean the honey off – food for them and clean wax for me. The rain came later this afternoon – a good time to bottle the filtered honey in glass jars.

Bees were considered so important to early Irish society that there were special bee laws designed to protect them, called  the 'bech bretha.' A 7th century holy woman called Gobnait, who founded a women's community in southwest Ireland, had a close relationship with bees and used their honey for healing illnesses and treating wounds. She was said to be one of three sisters who had power over fire, and is clearly a Christianised version of the triple fire-goddess, Brighid, with whom she shares the same feast-day in early February. 

When a band of thieves attempted to steal the community cattle, Gobnait let loose a swarm of bees on the rustlers and sent them fleeing in terror. At her shrine in Ballyvourney, Co. Cork, a statue depicts her standing on top of a hive, surrounded by bees.

Nowadays the bee population of North America and Europe is in serious decline, which is a disaster in the making for all our major crops which are dependent upon bees to pollinate them. Scientists are unable to pinpoint the reason, but suspects include the increase of commercial agriculture with its use of pesticides and destruction of wild plants and flowers for the bees’ forage. Also implicated are the mass transportation of colonies for commercial purposes, which creates stress for the bees and spreads disease. In fact, bees are an indicator species for the health of Mother Earth, and they are definitely giving us a dire warning about the way we are treating her.

To honor the Earth by giving back to the bees, you could join the many individuals and families who are taking up beekeeping in response to the current crisis. Or find some other ways to help, for instance:

• Leave an area of your garden wild so that plants can flourish for the benefit of the bees. In Scotland, this was called the 'gudeman’s croft,' the plot of land reserved for creatures of the wild, which included the faeries, or “good folk.”
  
• Create a wildflower meadow, or exchange formal flower beds and lawns for a profusion of flower varieties, especially early and late bloomers.
  
• Support small beekeepers by buying local honey and bee products such as beeswax candles and salves.
  
• Buy organic vegetables and fruit that have been raised without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and support organic farming in your area. 

 

A BLESSING ON THE HONEY AND A BLESSING ON THE BEES!