Mara Freeman's Blog

Ynys LochtynYnys Lochtyn in Cardigan Bay is a tiny island that has broken off from a long spit of land, reachable only at low tide.

The land swoops down dizzyingly from the heights of a hill above, on which there was once an ancient settlement known by the incantatory name of Pendinas Lochtyn. 

The islet is veined with white quartz
Veins of white quartz ripple through the rock of the islet, marking it out as a threshold to the Otherworld. It's not hard to imagine a line of shadowy figures from the past processing
down to the island from the hillfort perhaps to cast something out to sea: an offering perhaps? Or the body of one whose time has come to take the Journey of the Long White Sails?

I walked along the coast path last week, gazing down at Ynys Lochtyn in hopes of seeing the pod of dolphins that feed there. Instead I saw with the inner eye a giant figure superimposed over the western sea: a woman on a seat of stone, her blue robes dissolving into the white surf. On each side of her stood two huge pillars, the left one black, the right one white.

She was of course the High Priestess as depicted in the third card in the Rider-Waite tarot, enthroned between the two pillars of Force and Form which uphold the world of duality. On the card a veil is stretched between the pillars, affording a glimpse of a twilit seascape behind. Sky and sea are the same dim blue colour, because it is the place beyond duality where there is no light or dark: the Great Cosmic Sea, the vast ocean whose tides set the worlds into motion.

In Dion Fortune's novel, The Sea Priestess, she is brought to life through the mysterious Vivien le Fay Morgen, a skilled adept who believes herself to be a reincarnation of Morgen le Fay.


In trance, the goddess speaks through her :

    I am that soundless, boundless, bitter sea.
    All tides are mine, and answer unto me.
    Tides of the airs, tides of the inner earth;
    The secret, silent tides of death and birth.
    Tides of men’s souls, and dreams, and destiny –
    Isis Veiled, and Ea, Binah, Ge.

Fortune goes on to say:

In the beginning was space and darkness and stillness, older than time and forgotten of the gods. The sea of infinite space was the source of all being; life arose therein like a tide in the soundless sea.  All shall return thereto when the night of the gods draws in. This is the Great Sea, Marah, the Bitter One, the Great Mother. And because of the inertia of space ere movement arose as a tide, she is called by the wise the passive principle in nature, and is thought of as cosmic water, or space that flows.

She is called by many names by many men; but to all she is the Great Goddess – space and earth and water. As space she is called Ea, parent of the gods that made the gods; she is more old than time; she is the matrix of matter, the root-substance of all existence, undifferentiated, pure. She is also Binah, the Supernal Mother, that receiveth Chokmah, the Supernal Father. She is the giver of form to the formless force whereby it can build. She is also the bringer-in of death, for that which has form must die, outworn, in order that it may be born again to fuller life. All that is born must die, but that which dies shall be reborn. Therefore she is called Marah, the Bitter One, Our Lady of Sorrows. . .

Likewise she is called Ge, for she is the most ancient earth, the first-formed from the formless. All these is she, and they are seen in her, and whatsoever is of their nature answers unto her and she hath dominion over it. Her tides are its tides, her ways are its ways, and whoso knoweth the one, knoweth the other.

When I sit in vision seven miles away at home, I sometimes face towards the West and attune to this great being. Sometimes she has words to say, sometimes she silently leads me to her Temple of Healing in the deep waters below Ynys Lochtyn. This is Land-under-Wave, from which I return purified and refreshed. In my vision she holds a silver chalice like the Moon. The black and white pillars become two streams of spiritual power flowing down from the stars. One is Love, the other Wisdom. They converge and pour into the chalice of the soul and all is perfect peace within and without.

Ynys Lochtyn Sunset

The Hanging Woods, Ceredigion, WalesWhere the water whispers mid the shadowy rowan-trees
I have heard the Hidden People like the hum of swarming bees:
And when the moon has risen and the brown burn glisters grey
I have seen the Green Host marching in laughing disarray.
Fiona MacLeod

One of the few remaining habitats of the faery race in Britain and Ireland is a certain kind of woodland: off the beaten track and rarely frequented by humans. There was one very small area near the ford down my lane – a few years ago, I would half-sense, half-see them there at twilight: smallish, sturdy, warrior types who sometimes appeared with raised bows and arrows. They were highly suspicious and defensive – and well might they be, for a couple of years ago the man who owns the piece of land by the stream cleared the tangle of bush and briar, and coppiced some of the trees where they lived. I have not seen them since.

Approaching the woodsBut on Easter Sunday, a day made bright as a blade by a chill east wind, David and I visited a most remarkable wood where the faeries had clearly taken residence. This is what they call in these parts a "hanging wood" – a long sweep of dwarf trees clinging to the banks of a dizzyingly steep cliff. Most of them are sessile oaks, stunted by strong sea winds, their branches twisted into improbable shapes by their constant battle with the elements.

Primroses and bluebellsThe canopy of interwoven branches provides shelter for plants that have always been associated with faeries. Bluebells line the path into the trees: not for picking, unless you want to be pixie-led and never come out of the woods again.  Primroses are pools of pale yellow light in the dappled shade: protective plants which keep evil spirits away. Wood sorrel, known in Wales as "fairy bells" are said to summon faeries to their nightly revels.


Wood anemonesThen there's the wood anemone, whose name means "daughter of the wind"; and enchanter's nightshade, whose botanical name, Circaea alpina, reveals it as the flower of Circe, the woodland enchantress in Homer's Odyssey.

The hanging woods come to an abrupt end at a thick blackthorn hedge which appears to keep the leaning trees – and the unwary walker – from tumbling off the cliff into the sea below.  I stood for the longest time gazing over their glistening sprays of white blossom, my jacket snagged by their merciless thorns, watching the prehistoric-looking cormorants fly back and forth to a large rock, some of them with beaks full of tidbits for their young. Two seals briefly showed their bobbing heads above the water before disappearing into its depths again. This end of the wood reminded me of the poem, "Green Rain" by Shropshire poet, Mary Webb:

Into the scented woods we'll go,
And see the blackthorn swim in snow. . .
There are the twisted hawthorn trees
Thick-set with buds, as clear and pale
As golden water or green hail--
As if a storm of rain had stood
Enchanted in the thorny wood,
And, hearing fairy voices call,
Hung poised, forgetting how to fall.

Ancient woods beneath Carn Ingli, PembrokeshireI am reminded of other faery woods I have walked in: the brooding assembly of ancient mossy oaks in North Pembrokeshire, where visitors in the 1920s reported hearing the pipes of Pan. Hidden among these trees is a cave said to have been the residence of either a local druid or the Irish saint Brynach – or perhaps they both lived there at different times, worshiping different gods, beneath the sacred mountain of Carn Ingli, the Mount of Angels.


A Dryad of Wistman's Wood, DartmoorFurther afield are the haunted dells of Wistman's Wood on Dartmoor, the ferny foxglove hollows of the Fairy Glen on the Isle of Skye, and in Ireland, well, it's still a country blessed by quite a few wooded faery haunts, probably because people still hold Them in respect and put out offerings of milk and cakes in woodland shrines to keep Them sweet. But if one springs to mind, it's a certain hazel wood under a rocky cliff on the Burren in County Clare. At its heart is a holy well and flowing stream – it's the kind of place where Wandering Aengus himself might have found his "glimmering girl," as Yeats tells it in his famous poem.


So what makes a faery wood? In such places, the web of life is still intact. The invisible silver threads that link tree and plant, bird and insect, wind and water, are all connected in an etheric structure that scientists like to call an "ecosystem." The inherent natural harmony of life is like a struck bell, whose sound ripples out in patterns of sacred number and geometry. Such a place holds a particular kind of resonance that appeals to certain tribes of the faery race, who are nourished and sustained on such energies just as humans are by food. For instance, the clairvoyant writer, Geoffey Hodson, in his book, "Fairies at Work and Play," describes watching a small brownie who looked exhausted, passing into a tree:

"While observing the form I lost touch with the consciousness, which retreated to the centre of the trunk of the tree, and appeared to spread itself out into the corporate cell life of the tree. Ten minutes later, the brownie reappeared, rejuvenated and dancing with life and joy." (page 49)

This is why the traditional Scottish people who were very attuned to the spirit world followed the practice of creating a "Gudeman’s Croft," a part of their land or garden which was left to grow wild, and where faeries could  joyfully play, feed on the energies of sun, water, plants and soil, and regenerate themselves. Interestingly enough, this is now recommended as sound ecological practice in permaculture, the science of sustainable gardening, as it creates a fertile environment for birds, bees and insects. The hidden people appreciate it, too.


Leaving the enclosed world of the hanging woods for the immensity of sky, sea and air, we walked along the coast path, passing the occasional wind-sculpted hawthorn, which seemed to cling to the cliffs for dear life.


Then turning landwards for the road back home, we hiked over hills of coconut-scented gorse, passing a ruined oak where young lambs watched us with great curiosity.





I have a plan to return to this enchanted place one summer evening between the two lights, to sit with a quiet mind watching the dance of tree and wind, perhaps even catching a glimpse of the hidden people of the hanging woods.

Photographs by David J. Watkins and Mara Freeman, © 2014

Winter is harsh and difficult. Not for nothing did the Romans call their Winter Solstice festival, “Saturnalia,” ruled by Saturn, the planet which has a reputation of being a hard task-master.  While its polar opposite, Jupiter, teaches by supporting us, giving us a hand-up, opening doors, Saturn teaches by removing supports and throwing us back on our own resources. It’s easy to be positive relaxing on a sunny beach in July – but who are we when the temperature drops below freezing, the snowy fields are bare, and icy roads make even going for a walk a dangerous proposition?  Like the naked trees outside my window, stripped of their summer glory, we too are laid bare at this season of death, with only our inner resources to sustain us through the nights of darkness.
This year, in particular, many people are finding it hard to cling on to hope in the face of so many global crises, including economic downturns which have led to the loss of jobs and even homes, the failure of climate change talks and the accelerating extinction of species, not to mention the news that leaders of many nations throughout the world have been exposed as weak and self-serving at best, and dishonest and corrupt at worst.
So it is that at the Winter Solstice we look for stories that remind us that, in this world of opposites, the seed of Light is always born in the darkest hour. It was for this reason that the birth date of Jesus Christ, originally set in the springtime, was changed to late December by the Roman church in order to bring it in line with the age-old pagan myths about the return of the Sun after the longest night of the year.
A story that I have always loved is told about the late English novelist and playwright, J.B. Priestley, who had a vision in the form of a lucid dream in which he was fully conscious. He found himself looking down from a high tower beneath which a vast flock of birds were migrating. As he looked on, time appeared to accelerate as if he were part of a movie that had mysteriously sped up. In front of his eyes generations of birds of every known species grew frail and died, to be replaced in a great aerial stream by newborn fledglings who also grew older and died within what seemed like seconds. Priestley was overcome with sadness to see each life pass by without apparent purpose. At this point he thought that it might be better if all living creatures, including ourselves, could be spared this apparently futile struggle. As if in answer to this thought, time moved up another gear causing the birds to rush past in a blur, and within this vast carpet of feathers he noticed a white flame leaping from body to body. He understood this to be the flame of life itself. ‘What I had thought was tragedy,’ he later wrote, ‘was mere emptiness or a shadow show . . . I have never felt before such deep happiness as I knew at the time of my dream of the tower and the birds.'
Priestley’s vision reminds us of the infinite and imperishable creative power of life that underlies the constantly-changing world of appearances in which we live. However storm-tossed we may be on the ocean of life, all things pass and change, while beneath it all, the white flame continues to burn through all eternity.
This Winter Solstice light a candle, and as the flame blossoms into life, attune yourself to the undying White Flame. Feel an answering flame spring into life within the centre of your body. Let it glow and grow to fill your body, encompass your home and family, and send it to all those who struggle in the darkness. Remember that you yourself are a spark of the One Radiant Light that shines through all the worlds, and that you can call upon this Light to illumine all your days and nights and inspire you to be part of the healing of our planet.

In the deep fastnesses of the Berwyn Mountains stands a small church surrounded by ancient yews more than 2000 years old. It is dedicated to the Celtic holy woman, Melangell, who came there in the sixth century. Legend tells how a prince named Brochwel was out hunting in the forest when his hounds started a hare. The terrified creature ran as fast as the wind and sought refuge in a bramble thicket. The prince galloped after the eager pack, urging them to move in for the kill, but was astonished to find them backing away, their tails between their legs. The more he shouted, the more the dogs fled howling in fear.
© MOMA, Wales
Brochwel rode up to the thicket, and there he saw a beautiful maiden, deep in divine contemplation. The hare was crouched under the hem of her cloak, its wide amber eyes boldly facing down the dogs. The astonished prince asked the young woman how long she had dwelt alone in so remote a spot; she replied that in fifteen years she had never seen the face of man. She gave her name as Melangell, the daughter of an Irish king who wanted her to marry an old chieftain. Swift as a hare she fled to Wales to preserve her virginity and live a holy life in the wilderness of the Tanat valley. The prince was so moved by her story that he gave her this part of his lands to be a sanctuary forever.  Hares were given her special protection and it was forbidden to hunt them. From that time forth they accompanied her everywhere she went, and became known as "Melangell's lambs."
Melangell's reputation for holiness grew, and pilgrims from all over Wales made the dangerous journey over boggy moorland and through treacherous mountain passes, seeking healing and refuge, as the hare had once done, beneath her cloak of compassion. Many miracles took place at her woodland sanctuary and sacred spring on the hillside above. Around 1160 C.E. a stone church was built with a shrine where people could come to venerate her bones.

But who was Melangell? Walking through the lychgate of ancient stones into this hushed and holy circle of yews, it's tempting to believe that this was a much earlier pagan site dedicated to a pagan goddess. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of a nearby Bronze Age settlement, while many round barrows, ring cairns, and standing stones dot the higher ground testament to a long-forgotten Neolithic race. On the opposite side of the river is a rock ledge known as ‘Gwely Melangell’ (Melangell’s Bed) where the saint was said to have slept. Yet it is also known as ‘Gwely y Gawres’ (the Giantess’s Bed), presumably based on an older legend of a female giant who lived in the valley. Up above the Pennant valley rears the mountain peak of Cadair Bronwen, "Bronwen's Seat," the highest point in the Berwyns. Bronwen may have been an early mountain goddess, perhaps cognate with Branwen, sister of the god Brân in Welsh legend. And over to the north-east on the island of Anglesey stands a megalithic chambered cairn called "Barclodiad y Gawres," the Giantess's Apronful. It was said to have been created by a giantess who was carrying the huge boulders in her apron. The weight was too much for the apron strings, and the stones fell to form the cairn. The same story is found in Scotland and Ireland to explain the creation of rocky hills and chambered cairns, and hints of a long-forgotten primordial myth of an earth-shaper goddess.

Hare in Forest by Hans Hoffmann (German, about 1530 - 1591)The hare, that elusive creature of shadows and twilight, has long been associated with magic and the feminine in these islands. One has only to think of the well-known story of Boudicca, queen of the Iceni tribe, on the eve of the British uprising against the Roman occupation of Britain. Invoking the lunar warrior goddess, Andraste, to come to their aid, the queen released a hare from a fold in her dress and watched its movements to divine the outcome of the battle. Perhaps she was modelling herself after Northern goddesses associated with hares like Freyja, who was served by hare attendants, and Dame Holda, who was followed by a train of hares bearing torches.

Certainly the hare was a sacred animal in Britain, as Julius Caesar noted in his Commentaries, and borne out by the long-standing taboo on eating their flesh, which in some parts of Wales and Ireland has survived within living memory. In County Kerry it was forbidden to eat a hare in case it was your grandmother, as a spine-chillingly beautiful poem by poet, Bob Beagrey attests.As hares were once associated with goddesses, so they were later regarded as faeries and inevitably, as witches up to no good, perhaps because the hare was a popular familiar of the country witch. The young Scottish witch, Isobel Gowdie, at her trial for witchcraft in 1662, recited the charms that turned her and her sisters into hares, in which shape they leaped away to meet the Queen of Elphame in her home "under the hills."
I shall go into a hare,Wi’ sorrow and sighing and mickle care;And I shall go in the devil’s nameAye, till I come home again.
To change back, she would say:
Hare, hare, God send thee care.I am in a hare's likeness now,But I shall be in a woman's likeness even now.
In Wales such "hare witches" ran in families. The Victorian folklorist, Sir John Rhys, tells how his own nurse belonged to one such family and how his mother was considered to be rather reckless in entrusting him to her care, "as she might run away at any moment, leaving her charge to take care of itself."In the black furrow of a fieldI saw an old witch-hare this night;And she cocked a lissome ear,And she eyed the moon so bright,And she nibbled o' the green;And I whispered "Whsst! witch-hare",Away like a ghostie o'er the fieldShe fled, and left the moonlight there.
It's the usual story of a creature once revered as a goddess, demoted to the rank of woodland spirit, and finally to an evil witch. Yet somehow, the legend of Melangell managed to preserve the old memory of the hare as a sacred creature to be protected and cared for, a view appealing to all those who care about living creatures of the wild. This is no doubt one of the reasons that the old paths, until recently mere overgrown and muddy tracks weaving through bog and moorland, are now eagerly trodden by modern pilgrims in search of spiritual inspiration and renewal at her shrine.
Inside the low, narrow stone building, which dates from the twelfth century, a rood screen carved with oak leaves and acorns depicts the legend which made Melangell famous.  Beyond this is her canopied shrine, recently rebuilt centuries after the stones were scattered at the Reformation, and now held in high regard as the earliest surviving Romanesque shrine in Britain. Today it is glowing with candles lit by pilgrims who come to pray for healing, as they did of old. Its golden sandstone walls are carved with designs of foliage reminiscent of her original woodland refuge. It would have originally been painted and must have given the effect of enfolding Melangell in "the leafy sanctuary she symbolised, a local deity of the regenerative earth and of the sanctity of life."

[ii] [iii]  John Andrew Boyle. The Hare in Myth and Reality: A Review Article. Folklore, Vol. 84, No. 4 (Winter, 1973), p. 315. Online at http://rbedrosian.com/Folklore2/Folklore_Boyle_1973_Hare_Myth.pdf[iv]T.J. Hughes. Wales's Best One Hundred Churches. Seren: Bridgend, Wales, 2006, p. 184.

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

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.)

FoxglovesFaery glovesFaery 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.

Pink thrift on St David's HeadWhen 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 ButtercupsI 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 HeadAs 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 BeachThe 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.

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

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 themplanted 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 pickingAlong 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 betimesOver the meadows to Farmer Grimes.
And never was queen with jewelry richAs 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 beCome 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-muggerTowser 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.