It’s great how things come together sometimes. When a combination of planning plus serendipity collides to make something really *work*, it’s deeply gratifying. That’s how LĂĄ Bealtaine was this year.
First in the new house. It is my habit most years to make a flower crown in May Day colours (yellow and white) for the day itself and then dry it out and hang it on my wall somewhere. The number of crowns grows as the years pass. Intentionally, however, I did not bring any of the flower crowns from the old apartment into the new house. So this year, the first crown has now officially been made, used in art, used in collective spellwork, and is drying in preparation to take it’s place on a fresh new wall.
That “Joy of the Future” card from the Heart of the Faeries Oracle is proving HILARIOUSLY CHALLENGING!!! Da fuq!?
I have been going through a really…interesting… time lately with old baggage and insecurity. It’s a good thing I’m a witch who knows how to eat their old skins. I’ve been reading the cards (and asking friends) repeated questions over and over, from different angles… really trying to go the distance with a few snags in the ball of twine that is my life. Pull on one thing, find it loops back to a shadow wiggling behind you, journal about it, cry about it (a LOT), feel it begin to process, rinse, repeat. I am aware that having the good fortune to finally feel safe in my living environment has provided the perfect setting for this kind of work – it’s in the safety and quiet that you finally realise… it’s just you now, bitch. Do you even KNOW how to be happy!?
The answer is yes…or more accurately, that I can learn. If there’s one thing I KNOW I’m good at, it’s learning…and beginning to learn… and beginning to begin.
So May Day. Full moon. Time to let some shit go. Also the first day of my period such as it exists. Other than emotional dysregulation (grrrreat), my chief symptom is swelling… waxing full and round just like the fucking moon. Good for shadow work though. And I guess it means I’m sloughing more than just metaphors…
I went a bit quiet in the days preceding. Journaling, reading cards, squirming at the answers, and resting. Then May Day came and despite the swelling, I wore all cream and white. All handmade. Two petticoats with lace trim. A handmade corded bust support based on the top half of the famous Symington “Pretty Housemaid” pattern. A corset cover inspired camisole made from the same wide lace trim that’s gathered into the hem of one of my petticoats. I had intentionally left my hair unwashed (but *not* uncleaned or untended) for over a month (May Day was day 35) and my roots were growing in like crazy (half an inch in a single month! weee!!!). Then I attended Mixtress Rae’s radio show to dance with my shadows and expel evil. I took part in a planned collective spell she lead during the show – 5 people working the spell including me, I think… across 3 continents. She followed up the spell with Kate Bush’s “Get Out of My House” which was very cathartic and effective.
I kid you not, that Faeries Oracle card is “A Collective of Pixies” which was not only perfect for the show, for dancing, and for May Day but ALSO for the precise thing I’ve been asking the cards over and over again. For those of you who own the deck, go read the guid book entry for that card!!!
I took all of this very seriously (amidst the joy of dancing and so on). I mulled my readings over and did follow up readings through the course of the weekend. I also finally fully washed and re-henna’d my hair. I haven’t used shampoo or conditioner in 3 years… or anything soap-like on my hair in 2.5 years… what I use varies a little but it’s mainly a hand-prepared clay mixture followed by a diluted vinegar wash about once a month at the moment. I like that I have to pay attention to it. I followed this up with some ‘home-spa’ style care. It was good. Medicinal. Needed.
“One morning, one morning, one morning in May, I saw a young lady all wrapped in white linen. All wrapped in white linen and cold as the clay.”
I’m not done processing things, of course. Who is? Ever? But this is ultimately what witchcraft is about for me… I’m grateful to have it. None of it’s my first rodeo but *that* feels pretty fucking cool!
So I’m reworking the first disc of my “You and Me and the Devil Makes Three” mix-set to be less of a randomized selection of the others’ tastes and, instead, more in line with mine… and focusing on what it is to be a changeling (child) witch. It reminded me that I wanted to post a few videos (three, in fact) that capture what my dreams/nightmares were like as a little kid. While no single of one of these videos is an exact replica, taken as a group and sort of …meshed together… you get a near-perfect representation of what they look(ed) like.
Right down to painted faces, labyrinthine city structures and old parking garages, strange dingy forgotten tenement buildings, grown-up-children, poverty, splitting wounds, blood, and disease… and a lot of very sad lonely people crying for things I couldn’t even give myself.
The earliest and most ‘proto-typical’ of these dreams that I can remember was from when I was six. Many of them are recurring. Many show up in my poetry (of which I have included some examples in this post). And they are, of course, on-going.
… When the MorrĂgan makes sense to you, I guess it’s because REASONS. đ
The medieval clothes, sad smiles, strange long wooden hallways with dusty floors… so real.
I know it’s supposed to be tense by cinematic design but I literally can’t watch this one without every muscle clamping in my body. So fucking scary! And good!
This one reminds me of a figure I encountered in ‘dreams’ inspired by the song “Golden Slumbers” which used to frighten the fuck out of me as a kid… A strange painted man in a suit, surrounded by other theatrical faces fading into the night on wide & shallow concrete steps under a single street lamp telling me “Once there was a way to get back home…”
Do with all that what you will… it makes for great creative fodder.
The first among other things, makes reference to the dragon-dreams in Laurence Yep’s work “Dragonwings”… the mental image of sore shoulders after intense dreams had a huge impact on me as a kid. The other two are “simply” more narrative descriptions of specific dreams.
~ Saoirse.
PS. The featured image on this post is a photo of me that is no less unsettling in it’s original form… Sweet dreams, witchy children đ
Love poems are undoubtedly the hardest for me to write. I have composed only a handful that I consider successful in my life time. Here are three of those, all about the same person ^_^ You may note the ‘marriage’ of medieval mysticism and Pagan Otherworlds.
Poetry is such a meandering thing. I can’t say I’m the sort who works on the art of writing poetry or who reads widely or consistently to better acquaint myself with the source material… at least, I don’t do this with the kind of structure or consistency that makes sense to declare anywhere on the internet! But I care very intensely about developing a style, voice, and a sensory reality.
My sister writes BEAUTIFUL poetry that is much like her dreams – often in the style of epic narrative. With a temporal flow and an arc of completion. She once pointed out that my poetry evokes vignettes of mood and sensory experience. A window into a brief mystical moment. This is incidentally also very much like my dreams (albeit with the added potential for positivity since my dreams are almost exclusively terrible & terrifying… horrific, gothic, sublime.)
I am firmly of the view that poetry should be read aloud. At least, MINE should be… with breaks (or ‘rests’?) only as dictated by punctuation, rather than (GASP! HORROR!) at the end of every line. If you take into consideration that much of what I’ve written has included direct musical reference (in addition to those that can already be achieved through metre and so on), you may see that I *try* to extend the audio-visual to include music and dance.
Thus, in the poem “Untitled (Hazel for a Boy)” the hazel in the palm is a reference to the writings of Julian of Norwich on the nature of love… and I have layered this with a common trad descriptor of young beloveds: (nut) brown boy/girl. One long standing favourite of mine is “Ille Dhuinn, S’ Toigh Leam Thu”
The Scottish Gaelic lyrics are as follows:
âIlle dhuinn, âs toigh leam thu, âS toigh leam fhĂŹn thu, laochain; Mas toigh leat mi, is toigh leam thu â âS gur ĂČg a thug mi gaol dhut.
Dhâfhalbh mi mar a bâ Ă bhaist dhomh Air sĂ illibh coimhead chaorach â âS beag a bha dhem fhor orra, âS mo leannan air aâ chaolas.
Nuair dhĂŹrich mi suas Criongrabhal, âS e mâ inntinn nach robh aotrom â Bha âm bĂ ta mach gu Saighdeanais, âS i toidhdidh fo cuid aodaich.
âS ann a their mo phĂ rantan Gur tĂ mailt leotha mâ fhaoineas â Gum faighinn fear na bâ fheĂ rr na thu Le bĂ taichean âs le birlinn.
Ged gheibhinn fear na bâ fheĂ rr na thu Le bĂ taichean âs le birlinn, Gum bâ fheĂ rr leam fhĂŹn an gille donn Is e gun bhonn dhen tâsaoghal.
Ged gheall mi dhut gun leanainn thu âS gun dealaichinn ri mo dhaoine, Cha dâ rachainn dha Na Hearadh leat Air cheannachd air an tâsaoghal.
Ged a bhithinn pĂČsta riut Is cĂČir agam air dâ fhaotainn, Cha bâ fhada bhithinn beĂČ agad âS an DĂČmhnallach Ă s mâ aonais.
In English:
Brown-haired lad, Iâm fond of you, Iâm really fond of you, boy; If youâre fond of me, Iâm fond of you- Iâve loved you since I was young.
I set off as usual to look for the sheep but scant attention gave I to them, knowing my beloved was in the strait.
When I climbed Criongrabhal, my spirits were low â the ship, with well-trimmed sails, was out near Saighdeanais.
My parents say that my foolishness is a source of shame to them â that I could attract a better man than you, an owner of ships and galleys.
Though I could have a better man than you, an owner of ships and galleys, I would much prefer the brown-haired lad though he hadnât a penny in the world.
Though I promised you Iâd follow you and part company from my people, nothing in the world could induce me to go to Harris.
I wouldnât survive long if married to you, while pining for MacDonald.
Note that in Scottish Gaelic as well as in Irish the manner of describing hair colour is to pair the colour with the type of person directly, e.g. brown boy. The translation above opts for the “brown-haired” descriptor to make it clearer in English.
There are many other examples of songs that make reference to a nut-brown colour (many of which are super cringe tourist favourites here in Ireland) but this is the one that I have most often in mind due to it’s melancholy sound and its emphasis on the difficulties of separation and limited finances. Having formed and kept a bond across the Atlantic … between worlds, over nine waves, across time and space… lends itself quite well to the shared lore of our relationship. Indeed, this kind of poetic layering also lends itself to the spellbound witchy otherworldly quality of being fascinated and devoted to any human person other than myself. <3
Another such colour symbol, of course, is the azure blue… the medieval link with lapiz lazuli and text illuminations. Or the blue-grey/blue green (glĂĄs!) of the sea. The list goes ever on and on.
To my chosen person: “I have walked the world to find you. I’ve worn out the soles of three pairs of iron shoes and my hair is no longer red. But I come to claim you…”*
~ Saoirse.
*From “Hans, My Hedgehog” in Jim Henson’s The Storyteller
For the weekend that’s in it (Imbolc), I actually do want to reflect on how the time since Midwinter has progressed. It is not my intention, in general, to force posts that are relevant to each of the quarter and cross-quarter days – or to reflect on quintessentially comtemporary “witchy” themes at those times. If the genuine desire is there and the aims for the post are authentic I will do so, of course, but not otherwise.
Turn of the century fruit relish/ketchupHomemade bread, sauteed kale, & medieval pork loin in spiced wine with brown ale to drink.Gingersnaps and nog with rum and cinnamon, all homemade.Prep, set table, and spiked after-drinks of our Midwinter meal.
The last six weeks can be defined as internally chaotic. Everyone I talk to at the moment seems to be having a similar experience – it’s emotionally intense, it leads to and feeds off of dysregulated behaviours and coping mechanisms. In my case, I am struggling to regulate my time online. For example, I’ve gone down a whole rabbit hole recently by obsessively following commentary on developments in the pop music industry and the ongoing fallout from 2024 (::cough cough:: a-certain-Canadian-rapper-who-I’ve-never-liked’s lawsuits ::cough cough::). It’s not uncharacteristic for me to do this – sudden hyperfixations aren’t new – but it’s leading to far too much screen time, to the detriment of my other passions and pursuits, and I can tell what I’m really doing is running from myself… spending time ‘anywhere but here’.
I AM slowly getting a handle on it. Patience and self-directed kindness are key. These days, being overly punishing or strict in my self-talk feels incredibly puritanical in origin and style. I want to make adjustments because I *want* to, not because I’ve self-flagellated with *false* moralisations** about productivity, worth, and depth.
For the time being, I am not posting on youtube or making any videos. I don’t know when I will come back but I KNOW I need time away… long enough to detox. I’ve always enjoyed making videos but hated the process of having them published. Posting them publicly has always felt like an exercise in waiting for my cookie while talking myself around the possibility that no cookie will be forthcoming, that I don’t even need the cookie, wondering why I’m even seeking a cookie, am I seeking a cookie?, I don’t even like cookies!!!*** … It’s time for a break until I can think more clearly about that.
Instead, I have redesigned this blog to be more in line with the direction I’ve wanted to pursue. I have taken the various gallery pages and poetry pages down because they felt too static. I’m less inspired by presenting my portfolio at the moment and more inspired by working through my personal artistic/conceptual processes in an informal setting. I would like things to emerge more organically and dynamically here… I would like to post when I wish to without having to worry quite so much about polished presentation.
A sketch of a dream/nightmare, August 2024 & my 2024 copy of Benebell Wen’s Metaphysician’s Day Planner. Of COURSE my cover customisation is always extra.
My creative endeavours have been geared towards world building for a long time, obviously, but in the last… hm, more than six months… I have felt the need to buckle down and start sketching, drafting, practicing and looking up techniques, and fleshing out what I mean when I refer to visiting the Otherworld or going into The Labyrinth. My The Labyrinth. I want to practice drawing some of it’s architecture… I want it’s music to be audible, even in paintings or drawings or the clothes I ‘bring back’. I want to develop a stronger more identifiable visual vocabulary to help give form to the way I experience and move through the world(s).
Left to right: Almost finished drawing for Major Arcanum Key 18 (few tweaks left); reproduction printed chintz for next sewing project; a quick journal doodle; two homemade perfume oils; this year’s Metaphysician’s Day Planner đ
I have rearranged my altar and made (subtle?) adjustments to the visual symbolism around me. My magical practice is shifting (especially in the absence of witchtube and tarottube…which I haven’t followed for some time.) Everything is more organic, more me-ish now. Nothing remarkable or more meritorious than others, just more specific and suited to me than is relevant to most online ‘communities’ or ‘search & discovery’ algorithms.
Recent books have been Jorge Luis Borges’ “Labyrinths”, Terri Windling’s “The Wood Wife”, Peter S Beagle’s “The Last Unicorn” and “In Calabria”, Patricia A. McKillip’s “The Tower at Stonywood”, Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, all of Le Guin’s “Earthsea” materials, Lao Tzu’s “Tao Te Ching” (the Penguin classics translation by D. C. Lau), articles about Alan Garner’s Alderly Edge loose trilogy (I’ve read Weirdstone a few times… not keen on the rest really), more articles on medieval magic, and a bunch of books I’m forgetting at the moment. (Oh, I read all of the Terri Pratchett “Witch” books and several of the “Death” books for the first time.)
Most of the above books are re-reads specifically selected for the post Christmas/New Year ‘season’ but I don’t think it’s insignificant that I finally regained the ability to read last year after ca. 10 years. I’m back to building sensory worlds. I’m back to perceiving and walking through my imagination. I’m back to being able to retain imaginative detail in a way that I haven’t in a long time. At last, my fingers are itching like they used to bring that into creative fruition.
Left to right: Lao Tzu & Borges; a sketch of a childhood nightmare (“Golden Slumbers”) playing around with two point perspective; a raglan jumper I’m knitting for my partner (I found Irish sourced DK wool! … can’t get Shetland wool anymore due to GPSR).
…So to return to this idea of chaos, running from myself, fixating on ‘anywhere but here, in MY life’, I understand it. I can’t speak for everyone but I was raised and socialised to flinch from my self-expression. I am capable of and even prone to terrible potency and it can be scary and destructive. But now I’ve officially**** been a witch for almost 8 years (and I’m 37, not 17). Not a whole lot scares me for long and, of paramount importance, I have learned to turn around and walk straight towards the source of my shadow and fear. Like Sparrowhawk.
In all the heightened emotions, chaos, internal dynamics, and even external gnostic perceptions of the past six weeks, it really does feel like I’m pushing against the inertia of top soil after a long dormant period. Imbolc is the start of Spring here in Ireland and what I love about that is that Spring starts before you can outwardly see it. Change begins before the first translucent shoots appear. Seasons are so liminal and full of process and development. That’s why today’s blog post is to honour and acknowledge the arrival of Imbolc, and the beginning of Spring.
~ Saoirse.
** By which I mean that the knee-jerk assumptions of the social demographic I grew up in are assumptions I disagree with but that are intrusive and persistent in my head regarding ‘how I spend my time’.
*** i.e. The joy of making and wishing to publish videos is a different/separate phenomenon than the experience of ‘being on youtube’. Youtube the platform is increasingly difficult to navigate in a steady manner. It sucks up so much time and energy (to post AND to sift/watch) that is better spent actually sketching or sewing or…literally anything else.
**** By which I mean both that I explicitly converted to a Pagan paradigm and that I adopted the term “witch” (entailing daily acts of witchcraft) just before Lughnasadh of 2017. I had written college papers on the MorrĂgan, comparative myth, medieval and early modern mysticism, religious commentary, and crafted my life away with art and clothes and fairy wings for YEARS at that point. But in 2017 I stopped running from ‘the label’.
[CW – there will be reference to symptoms of trauma but I will not discuss details nor will I indicate any specific type of experience other than to discuss how it affects my magico-spiritual process.]
Half moon this morning. Waxing gibbous. Serendipitously, this is the card I received in a single draw from the Pagan Otherworlds Tarot. How apt.
I have been posting a bit more openly about music lately. Mostly here on the blog. I want to talk a little more specifically about why this – for me – constitutes witchcraft and deep magical healing work.
If anyone wants a recommendation for an amazing young musician and singer coming out of the American âOld Timeyâ Trad world (as distinct from modern bluegrass!) they should check out Nora Brown. Holy shit her work is good. Sheâs currently collaborating with a fiddler named Stephanie Coleman and equally her style is deep, rhythmic, and rooted.
Iâve known of Nora Brown for a few years now but yesterday I made an attempt to watch the Tiny Desk concert above. I say âattemptâ because by the time they started into ‘The Old Blue Bonnet’ I was shaking, hyperventilating and so on. Having too many visceral and deeply loved memories of American-specific experiences⊠looking up at the moon through pine needles⊠fireglow shining through a cabin window at the bottom of a mountain valley⊠a small trickling stream beneath my feet⊠elk in the morning, bears on a walk. The music of the unassuming – jeans and t-shirts – trading information, laughing, and the deep heartbeat of boots on a floor keeping the tunes flowing. People talking with their feet and singing with their handsâŠ
I couldnât do it yesterday.
I told my partner it felt like a world had vanished but that I (and only I among anyone I know now) could hear faint echoes of it calling out âGoodbye! Goodbye!â*
So today is the half moon and I drew the half moon card. To me, the card says ‘Now you can do it and I will help.’ I took slooooow breaths, clutching the deck (my bridge between worlds), listened to this gem of a video and let what once was run its course through the channel of my emotions. Tears again but more manageable this time.
Old grainy photos of a good party trick…if you have lots of fiddlers!
It is, of course, not at all accidental that so much of American trad songs are fixated on war, death, loss, poverty, jail time, labour, loneliness. (The backbone of the ‘American dream’?) When people move too fast over land that isnât theirs their own pre-existing problems grow with them. I donât find much to ‘redeem’ about this⊠but I do find subtlety and nuance, I guess. The tunes I like the most have the least pretense – theyâre tunes by and for flawed people. Maybe even the damned (depending on your worldview⊠I use demonic imagery in my witchcraft for many reasons). They carry no false promises and their dogma sounds tired.
I donât know if I will ever use my violin for fiddle music again⊠I have no idea how that would feel in the body. Playing music, by definition, replicates the movements and bodily experiences of the past. Thatâs what practice IS⊠taking what you have already done and keeping it alive. Maybe thatâs what makes it so hard and so rewarding at once. I am comforted by the knowledge I have of different forms of music and the fact that deep down I am fortunate to have some access to those skills and worlds⊠but I tend to feel shattered by the awareness that I come from a world in which I did not fit and I live now in a world that doesnât know about any of that – at all. And I still do not fit.
This, incidentally, is how trad music is formed. Traditions carried. Stories retold and reworked. Sources cited (as is done so amazingly in the Tiny Desk video!)
To be a witch for me (among many other things) is to go to the altar and lay my music at Her feet. To carve a space that is mine⊠with bits and bobs of my story – the stuff that makes me howl and cry; the stuff that makes me dance; and the stuff that I know emerges syncretic and flawed⊠and to let it emerge and take its new form anyway. I take it all with me. These things are in my satchel. Itâs painful to perceive, now, that no one around me knows it. Iâm a person with no context. It must be enough that I know it.
Baby-face Saoirse playing the bodhrĂĄn in Ireland. Think this might even have been in Cork!
The half moon will help me see that and shift my perspective back towards joy. And, Iâm not totally alone⊠I can still light a bonfire on occasion and surround myself with other music makers. I know Iâve left things behind for a reason and I guess Iâll keep the practice of fitting into nowhere at all. Chronically transatlantic like so many before me⊠but hopefully reckoning a bit better with empathy and collective responsibility!
Below, a couple poems I wrote a few years ago, during an earlier phase of processing these things:
The MorrĂgan often ‘speaks’ to me through verse (UPG) and the following poem felt like an answer to wondering if she was there ‘even then’.
From 2022, it makes reference to John Prine as well as “Blackbird” performed by the Lonesome Sisters (written by Debra Clifford about her mother… Debra herself passed away in 2022.)
Another old photo. Wistful whistle tunes and homemade wings…
~ Saoirse.
* Rayna Gellert*** has composed some great songs out of this tradition that capture many of these feelings for me – “Strike the Bells” from her album ‘Workin’s Too Hard’ and “Nothing” from her album ‘Old Light: Songs from my Childhood and Other Gone Worlds’ come immediately to mind. Whew!
** This link is to a live performance (including the only mistake I’ve ever heard him make! ^_^) This is important firstly because I think his live renditions have a more dirge-like quality than his recorded version (which is on his album ‘Soon Be Time’) and secondly because he performed this song live for the first time one night at my college (a few years after I had stopped going to the mountains each summer to a camp where he and others taught) … I was talking to him after the gig and he asked me how the tune came across. I told him it was beautiful and made me cry and he told me it was the first time he’d done it on stage!!!
*** Incidentally, the same summer location was where I first had the privilege of meeting Dan Gellert, Rayna’s father. Holy shit that man can play and on the most gorgeous fretless banjo to boot!
I would love to hear your responses, thoughts, etc. in the comments. But please note, I’m not soliciting for comfort or validation. I’m wary of encouraging what I so often interpret in comments as codependent language. I’m fine! I am me and you are you. Concepts & practices such as witchcraft are shared but also truly individual – this is what makes them so potent! đ
I wanted to share some recent moments of simple joy & presence. These photographs were not necessarily taken for the purpose of sharing in a public format. However, I am in the habit of taking constant photos of brambles, for example… Such photos in turn make up a good back catalogue of plant/animal material to from which to practice drawing**, to practice seeing, and to practice layering concepts.
Whether something gets shared or not is rarely planned (at least rarely planned fully) and the follow-through on any such plans also rarely correlates to the intent in taking the photograph. It’s all a bit loosey goosey up in here.
For me, it has become increasingly clear that the intent to share (or not?) is not so binary… Thus, some recent moments of craft, joy, & sensory immersion.
Little doors…“Down among the weeds, down among the thorn” (‘Tam Lin’; Child Ballad 39, Roud Index 35)Looking for Miss Tittlemouse…Tarot decks ‘in sa phub’! (Crystal Tarot, my trusty travel deck.)Salmon Advice cards …not sure this is the correct Vol. box though…The Glamour altar… among other things.A moment of ‘synchronicity’ with a friend đ5 am, after nightmares.Colour, texture, & lots of hidden flora & fauna amidst curvilinear existence.
For some context on what I’m doing with the header image, you might like to watch this video of mine on The Hush Tarot & it’s references to Arthur Rackham/the Golden Age of Illustration:
An oldie but a goodie…
~ Saoirse
* A reference to the highly influential (1970s) art historical work of the same name by John Berger. You can watch it for free here. I’ve actually not watched all of it myself yet but the significance of this was two fold – to challenge what was up to that point a more traditionalist method of interpreting art historical work & to introduce the viewing audience to ways of questioning & analysing the art they take in or experience.
** The header image is a composite of my own photography of birch trees and a print I own of “The Fairy Tightrope”/”Fairy Dancing on a Spiderweb” by Arthur Rackham. You can see an early version of this image in a 1912(?) copy for free from the New York Public Library here. I guess you can also be glad I’m not sharing my photographs of dead rats and such đ
*** Check out the album Child Ballads by AnaĂŻs Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer. It has a *gorgeous* version of Tam Lin that keeps the pregnancy/poison narrative in! …I mean, check out AnaĂŻs Mitchell in general ::drool::
As with so many things, a simple mental association double checked through the lens of a âquick Googleâ yields a seriously mind-boggling rabbit hole. This blog post serves as a contextual supplement to this video:
I have had the topic of names on my mind for a long time. Anyone who plays traditional music will know that the name of any given tune is, shall we say, flexible. The way in which a lot of trad music works is that any given player or performer and certainly the more reputable recording artists will cite who’s version of a tune they play, where they have introduced changes, and will often also indicate if their own regional style has affected their playing or not, etc. A living folk tradition needs both that kind of flexibility as well as that kind of connectivity and accountability.
Recently, I decided to approximate a version of Shady Grove, pilfering most of my style and technique from this OLD video by âGretchenmanâ (just look at his fingers fly!!!):
In doing so, I did a quick search online to refresh my memory about the lyrics (because I do sing along sometimes when I play) and check in on some basic background information on the song. Shady Grove (Roud 4456) is mostly considered an Appalachian tune [1,2] and there is a possible link with the English/Scottish tune Matty Groves (Roud 52; a famous version of which was recorded by Fairport Convention, for example) [3]. The two songs share the same melody and the fact that one is a murder ballad and the other a song in which a woman’s name has seemingly toponymic qualities interested me from a personal gnosis perspective. Drawing wild and highly metaphorical connections in my own head, I liked the familiarity of something that sounds like a place having an almost euhemerised quality⊠certainly Ireland abounds with such locations and its medieval literature/mythology has whole genres and stories centered on naming places after people and people after places, or just blending the two entirely.
Now, I’m NOT claiming that there is any such analogy to be drawn in historically viable or collectively verified ontological* terms. It’s just a fun poetic exercise. Creative license, as it were.
However! The rabbit hole referred to earlier drew me from link to link: first investigating the lyrical content of Shady Grove; then to it’s Roud Index Number and associated articles about the development of the song over time (including various collections in which it is annotated as well as different known recordings of it); then to re-acquainting myself with some of the basics on Cecil Sharp (because it’s been a while). Lo and behold⊠I forgot a) about his nationalism and the troubled legacy of his methodology in seeking out âEnglishnessâ in music, especially in Southern Appalachia [5] but also b) that he was in other ways influenced by William Morrisâ socialist lectures and âŠpotentially also approached his work through the lens of spiritualism at some point!? đ€Ż
It’s strikes me that it’s possible this word has some other meanings or context of which I am not aware (I yielded no obvious or immediate answers from a quick search online) but it would seem there are a few articles out there at least that might make this clear once Iâve had a chance to read them. In theory, it doesn’t strike me as too unreasonable because this IS a time period in which a lot of academia (especially those with nationalist or otherwise politicised interest in folk movements) drift in and out of spiritualist circles and ‘methods’ of inquiry**.
I am not sure how all of that will go yet but I also hope to read a few more recent assessments of the problems in Sharp’s legacy.
Magickally, one of the things I am doing in playing such a tune (in which I usually face my altar, by the way) is reshaping identity. Drawing creative connections on the euhemerization of names, of nouns as names/names as nouns, and asking questions of my own anthropopathism and âpathetic fallacyâ***.
At this point, the choice to play “Flatlands” by Chelsea Wolfe and Mark Lanegan over the first part of my video should begin to make added sense.
It all comes back around to walking the razor edge between what seems appealing as a creative or metaphorical idea and what is actually academically and historically viable work. We have to be okay with their inherent dissonance. You might even call it⊠an art.
* Here I am using the philosphical defintion of âontologicalâ rather than the metaphysical one!
** Giving the Golden Dawn, Theosophists, and soooo many 19th and early-20th century artists and thinkers bombastic side-eye. Criminal offensive side-eye.
*** Oop! Hello, Ruskin!
§ 9. And thus, in full, there are four classes: the men who feel nothing, and therefore see truly; the men who feel strongly, think weakly, and see untruly (second order of poets); the men who feel strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first order of poets); and the men who, strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to influences stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because what they see is inconceivably above them. This last is the usual condition of prophetic inspiration.
§ 10. I separate these classes, in order that their character may be clearly understood; but of course they are united each to the other by imperceptible transitions, and the same mind, according to the influences to which it is subjected, passes at different times into the various states. Still, the difference between the great and less man is, on the whole, chiefly in this point of ‘alterability‘. […]
§ 11. Now so long as we see that the ‘feeling‘ is true, we pardon, or are even pleased by, the confessed fallacy of sight which it induces: we are pleased, for instance, with those lines of Kingsley’s, above quoted, not because they fallaciously describe foam, but because they faithfully describe sorrow. [7]
John Ruskin at Glen Finglas by John Everett Millais, 1853-1854 (Public Domain)
(1) Shady Grove (Roud 4456), Mainly Norfolk: English Folk and Other Good Music, mainlynorfolk.info/folk/songs/shadygrove.html. Accessed 6 Feb. 2024.
(2) âVaughan Williams Memorial Library: Shady Grove.â English Folk Dance & Song Society, http://www.vwml.org/search?q=Shady%20Grove&is=1. Accessed 6 Feb. 2024. (Of note, the English Folk Dance & Song Society owns the Cecil Sharp House.)
(3) Spiegel, Max. âOrigins: âshady Groveâ a MondegreenâŻ?â The Mudcat Cafe, mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=131461. Accessed 6 Feb. 2024. (“Mondegreen” is my new favourite word now. Story of my hearing impaired life!)
(5) âCecil Sharp.â Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Jan. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Sharp#Political_Views. (Yes, its Wikipedia ~ but the citations at the bottom of the article look like they’re worth exploring.)
(7) Ruskin, John. âOf the Pathetic Fallacy from âmodern Paintersâ (Volume III, Pt. 4, 1856) by John Ruskin.â The Pathetic Fallacy, Ruskin (1856), http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/ruskinj/index.htm. Accessed 6 Feb. 2024. (I have no interest or affiliation with the author of this site as a whole, this link is simply where I have accessed an online free readable copy of Ruskin’s writings on the Pathetic Fallacy.)
Hello there… a poem conceived ‘of an evening’ in the aftermath of a maddening supermoon in early autumn. Shall we play a game of ‘wake the dead’?
I’d say most of my poetry arises from attempting to describe the place where sensory detail and cognition meet… but please think of this however you choose!
From the Deviant Moon Tarot (Paradoxical)… this card always reminds me of Tom Waits.
~ Sorsha.
*The title is from Tom Waits lyrics to “No one knows I’m gone”.
*Deck featured in header image ~ Trionfi della Luna (Paradoxical)
