So Bring Him Incense, Gold, and Myrrh..

 A happy feast day on this the twelfth and last day of the Long Christmas! There is a brief article about forgotten customs of Epiphany on One Peter Five, to which I shall direct you attention. I also draw you attention to another article on the same sight, explaining the custom of chalking the doors on Epiphany, and gives the little ritual for doing so. The article on forgotten customs listed and event I had never heard of before-- the Precession of the Magi on the Clock Tower of Venice. There is a decent article about the this event here, and a video at the end, that plays through serval occurrences of this event. I love the little touch of the Kings doffing their crowns to the Madonna and Child. 

For this feast day, I am offering a version of What Child Is This from a concert by Apollo's Fire. Generally, this carol is sung to the tune of Greensleeves, but in this performance, it is sung to an old Irish tune called, My Lagan Love. It is very beautiful, and I like it:

Indeed, the entire Celtic Christmas Vespers performance is worth taking a listen of. For people like me who have managed to collect rather an encompassing range of carols-- including quite a number from a various Gaelic traditions-- all of this music sounds "Christmas" to me, as I have heard all of them before, mixed in with other, more common carols. Yet, even for people to whom most or all of these songs are new, it is very lovely, very joyful, and a fitting way to close out Christmas and head into the season of Epiphany.

Fermarono i Cieli

 I have mentioned the Chieftains' Christmas in Rome album before on this blog (here and here in case you want to look them up). It is a bit of an odd outing for the traditional Irish band-- even when they do World-Musicky albums (such as Santiago) they tend to simply throw a bunch of music at you. There may be a theme to the album, but in general, it is a collection of music. Christmas in Rome does do that too, but it also uses tunes (most notably The March of the Three Kings and Canzone de Zampognari) as reoccurring motifs that anchor the various orchestral and traditional pieces into a unified whole. The album does have a both a distinctive Italian and an Irish vibe, as one would expect from such an album title, coming from such a band... But there are also random odd things in there, such as a very French version of O Holy Night, and Silent Night in various languages, and a Bulgarian carol... and a German carol... and an Irish Gaelic carol, sung by the monks of Glenstall Abbey.... and most inexplicable of all, the Harlem Gospel Choir, doing very Gospel covers of songs which-- given the album's lush mix of classical orchestration, the Chieftains' distinctive sound, and traditionally approached European carols-- is rather jarring to my ear. Unlikely the aforementioned Santiago album, which has no real unifying theme, other than to look at Spanish (including New World Spanish) musical traditions, Christmas in Rome is at once a more focused and a more scattered collection of music, which nonetheless, manages to mostly work, and which is still one of my favourite out-of-the-box Christmas albums. 

A particularly beautiful Italian carol is featured in it. Fermarono i Cieli is sung by Paola Cecchi, and a beautifully arranged by Monsignor Marco Frisina. The words are written by St. Alphonsis de Liguori (who also wrote Tu Scendi dalle Stelle a.k.a. Canzone de Zampognari) and a translation can be found here. On the CD, this song medleys into an Irish Gaelic lullaby, which is quite charming, but I thought I'd like to just share the beautiful Italian Christmas song on its own, so here it is:

The Flight into Egypt.

 Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, and it seems fitting to share this haunting old irish carol, An Teicheadh Go hEigipt (The Flight into Egypt) sung by Nóirín Ní Riain & the Monks of Glenstal Abbey. The translation is included in the description-- and yes, it inaccurately depicts the angel speaking to Mary, rather than St. Joseph, but the tune, and the imagery are very beautiful:

Canzone de Zampognari

Posting that Chieftains song yesterday reminded me that they did a second Christmas album that sounds not a thing like their first. Silent Night: A Christmas in Rome has a more classical, and Italian flavour to it-- though, of course, infused with a solidly Celtic vibe; sort of pan-Celtic, as there is a Breton carol on there, and some of the musical tones sound somewhat Galician to me. (Both of those are Celtic region in Mediterranean countries: France and Spain respectively).

I have decided to highlight a song from that album tonight, the Overture for the whole recording, but it is, properly speaking, merely a traditional Italian carol, set to orchestration. You are getting it for a couple reasons. The first is that it struck me that a carol outside of the Anglo/Germanic tradition might be nice for a chance. The second is that this particular tune is a special favourite of mine.* The words and melody were written by St. Alphonsus Liguori. When sung, the titles is Tu Scendi delle Stelle, but the tune is also strongly associated with Italian pipers, and so it is also known as Canzone de Zampognari-- or the Piper's Carol. This arrangement-- lushly orchestrated as it is-- makes room for the traditional bagpipes, and the Choir of the Basilica of S. Giovanni in Laterano give us the sung version, which run as follows:

1. Tu scendi dalle stelle,

O Re del Cielo,

e vieni in una grotta,

al freddo al gelo.

O Bambino mio Divino

Io ti vedo qui a tremar,

O Dio Beato

Ahi, quanto ti costò

l'avermi amato!

2. A te, che sei del mondo

il Creatore,

mancano panni e fuoco;

O mio Signore!

Caro eletto Pargoletto,

Quanto questa povertà

più mi innamora!

Giacché ti fece amor

povero ancora!

1. From starry skies descending,

Thou comest, glorious King,

A manger low Thy bed,

In winter's icy sting;

O my dearest Child most holy,

Shudd'ring, trembling in the cold!

Great God, Thou lovest me!

What suff'ring Thou didst bear,

That I near Thee might be!

2. Thou art the world's Creator,

God's own and true Word,

Yet here no robe, no fire

For Thee, Divine Lord.

Dearest, fairest, sweetest Infant,

Dire this state of poverty.

The more I care for Thee,

Since Thou, O Love Divine,

Will'st now so poor to be

* Why is this a special favourite you ask? Well, after all it is called Canzone de Zampognari and how can a piper not like a carol associated particularly with the pipes? But there is another reason as well: when I first started playing bagpipes (the Scottish ones, of course) my Auntie Ginia (an Italian great aunt) told me that her great grandfather, back in Italy, had played bagpipes. Indeed the Abruzzi region where the Italian side of the family comes from, has a strong piping tradition, which makes me feel like I am carrying on that tradition, for all I am on Highland pipes, rather than Italian ones. Furthermore, there is an Italian legend of a Christmas piper playing for Our Lady on the night Christ was born, and while this obviously is not the tune that would have been played, it puts me in mind of that legend as well, and makes me rather proud of being a piper. 

I Sing of that Night in Bethlehem.

When I was very much younger than I am now, a very good friend recorded me a fabulous, 120 minute tape of mostly Irish Christmas music. A great number of tunes from the Chieftains Bells of Dublin CD. Tommy Makem's increasingly hard to Christmas CD was on it. Some Medieval and Renaissance carols (I suspect the Boston Camerata?) make an appearance. The Irish Tenors are there. Some one-off tunes whose origins are lost to the mists of time balance out the rest. It was a rich, highly traditional, mostly religious, very warm and classic Christmas mix that was the Christmas tape for a number of years. Years of use took its toll on the poor thing, and advancing technology meant that I could not listen to it any more-- a thing which was a great sorrow not only for me,  but for all my younger sisters, for whom it had also been the Christmas tape.... so after several years of missing not only the music, but that particular mix of the music, I bought a digital converter, and recorded it to my computer. And made CDs for all and sundry. And I have listened to it, and remembered how much I enjoyed it, and how many songs on there have become so much apart of Christmas, that I do not realise that they are not exactly the most common of carols... Such as the old Irish carol, Don Oíche Úd i mBeithil. 

I am quite surprised to see that I have not posted this particular song before, as it has long been one of my favourites on that whole tape of Good Music. There are a good many version of this out there, from a very beautiful version by the Monks of Glenstal Abbey, to popular singer Moya Brennan, but this is the first version I heard, and while sentimentality might have something to do with it, I still think it is the best version of it. The recitation at the beginning is basically a poetic English translation of the song, but I can tell you very little more about it, save that it is traditional, and very popular... and that the guy who does the recitation, Burgess Meredith, is apparently the same guy who plays Rocky's coach in the Rocky movies.This is something I did not know until I went poking around trying to find some sort of a history to go with the song. Why the Chieftains made such an odd choice will probably always remain a mystery, but man, he does recite it well:

May Your Days Be Merry

It occurs to me that it might be nice to share a more upbeat Christmas song for a change. You are getting a very idiotically cheerful song by the Irish Rovers and I really cannot tell you much more about it. Their liner notes attribute it to S. C. Smith, whoever that is. Google is not forthcoming, no matter how many ways I try to make inquiry. It suggests that I really want Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, and I am pretty darned sure that I do not. I also found several website solemnly averring that the first line runs, "When I was afar one winters day I took my TV neath the tree" which is just stupid. To begin with, no one just happens to be carrying a TV when their afarring. And even if we suppose that the TV was obtained when the person had settled down for the night in that far away place, taking it out neath the trees during winter is exceedingly ill-advised. And lastly, the rest of the song is a pretty traditional and straightforward retelling of the Christmas story, which would make a TV's appearance highly anachronistic. If you ask me (and I know you won't) the line actually runs "When I was afar one winters day, I took my tea beneath a tree". But what do I know?

Without further ado, let me present The Christmas Traveller:

And if you have ever heard a hallelujah sung with more unbridled mirth than they do, I'd like to here it!

Travelling....

That was the prompt today. A travel poem... The older I get, the less I like the travelling part of travelling. I like cruising well enough - a nice road trip with music and good scenery. Anything more than that - especially if it involves the humiliation of airport travel - and I just want to get to where ever I am going and never get on the plane again. This poem is about that, and the relief that comes with arriving:

Dublin 2016

Centennial of the Easter Rising

I’ve so long been travelling-

Purgatorial timelessness,

Displaced and moorless-

Through hermetical airports,

In pressure-locked cabins,

Efficient and airless,

Purposefully comfortless,

With weather only

a thing through the glass,

That this touch of wildness,

This smell of sweetness:

The sea-smell borne

on the wind, in the rain-

Cuts to the heart of me,

Quickens and blesses –

Balm to my weariness:

I am an exile, returning to home.

Field Notes from Life

I solved a mystery! See these things?

When I was growing up, we called them "wishing stars".  During the late summer and early fall, they can be seen flying delicately past on the slightest breeze. We used to catch them, make wishes on them, and let them carry the wish away with them. Occasionally, some of the younger people would make "pets" of them, naming them and keeping them around for while.

None of us knew what they were. Common sense pointed to the seeds of some multi-petalled plant that turns to fluff when it is finished flowering - something like a dandelion, but bigger. The mostly likely candidate was this flower:

from Wikipedia

which I think is called Mule Ear, but I could be wrong. The only thing is - those produce seeds the same way dandelions do - sort of umbrellas, with the seed dangling from a long handle, and the wishing stars were clearly fluff all the way around. By the sheerest accident, I discovered their host plant while I was strolling along the shoreline last week:

From merriam-webster.com. I have a really good picture of the
thistle I saw, but I cannot get it to transfer from my phone to
my computer. Alack. We must content ourselves with a stock
photo from a dictionary instead. Such is life.

Yep, they are thistledown! I had no idea. I was ridiculously excited. It's the little things, you know.

I am not going to offer any apologies for the dreadful neglect of this blog I have been exhibiting of late, but I will proffer up two explanations. The first is simply that there has been a good deal of Life betwixt the last post and this one - very good Life at times, and very trying Life at others. It is not always easy to sit down and write when one is busy Living. The second is that I have been giving serious consideration to the sort of blog I actually want this to be. Right now, I feel as though is is something of a rummage room, full of odds and ends, some of which are quite splendid, but don't really go well with anything else in the same place.

I am still not entirely sure what I am wanting it to look like from here on out, but I do want it to have a regular schedule of posts: a poetry post (either my own, or one I've read that impressed me); a book review post; and arty post, etc. I like the tone if the writing well enough, but I would like to tighten it up a bit and treat it a little more seriously than I have been - not dabbling with it, but really writing on it. Until I have settled on a new model, posting will probably continue to be a bit spotty for a while.
In the meantime, however, it seemed like it was more than time to put something up here. So I present the following:

April/May: I went off to Ireland on a 3 week vacation. That is the longest vacation I have ever taken, and the first proper holiday I have had in a number of years. I was worried about it before hand, but there was no need to be. It was grand. I've always been in love with Ireland, but this trip reminded me of why. There is something in the wild changeableness of the weather, the smell of salt, and of peat - oh, how I love the smell of peat! Something in the the slower pace of life, the genuine interest the Irish seem to take in each other, the sense of being connected to the land, and of history lurking just around the corner of every place you stand. It suited me, and there was an odd sense of homecoming in it. I had great joy in my time there, and a hard time coming home afterwards. Highlights include:

 - Standing in O'Connell Street, in front of the GPO with thousands of Irishmen and women, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rebellion. I missed a lot of the official commemorations, which took place during Easter Week, but was there for the actual calendar date that the uprising started. There was music and speeches and poetry, and very few things get the heart going like standing in the middle of a crowd like that, with 4 old fellas from the North Counties, singing rebel songs with all one's might and mien.

 - Attending a High Mass at this Church.

 - Watching a common street worker, waist deep in a trench, chipping away at a bit of stone to add to the dry-stone wall he was making. Indeed, the Irish skill with stone, whether the ancient Monoliths of Newgrange and Howth, or the beehive chapels along the Dingle Coast or the sort of every-day craftsmanship highlighted here, impressed me hugely.

 - Attending an Irish Language Course in Gleann Chulm Cille.

 The course was intense, but fantastic, and I am absolutely mad about Irish again. But the Gleann.... oh, the Gleann! In reality, it is probably too remote and tree-less a place for me to live out my life there, but I wanted to, very much. It is a spare, and incredibly beautiful place, right on the broken edge of the world,

in which peat is still cut by hand from mountain bogs, there are no stores, but a basic grocery, sheep and cattle raising, and narrow, narrow roads. The sea pounds against the far end of the Gleann, and the smell of peat is everywhere.



And the fish! I had one of the simplest and best meals of my life and a tiny restaurant there - nothing more than cold, smoked fishes, and salad, and potatoes, and the brilliant brown bread that I took a passionate liking too and have been attempting to duplicate ever since I got home - but each bite was a revelation and I ate it all with a sense of wonder.

- Bike riding about Inish Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands, It was a beautiful, soft day, sunny and pleasant. The Island is not big, there are parts of it in which you can stand and see the whole thing, with the sea crashing in on it from every side. The wildflowers bloomed everywhere and the earth itself seem formed of music.

- Russell's Bed and Breakfast in Dingle. The Dingle Pennisula in general is wonderful. It has much of the wild beauty that so drew me in Gleann Chulomchille, but softened just enough.

I could spend months in the Gleann. I could live on Dingle. But Russells B&B was a highlight, not only of the Peninsula, but of the whole trip. It is exactly what one is expecting from a B&B - wonderfully comfortable rooms, full of intimate little touches that make you feel as though you are guest rather than a tenant. For breakfast, you can get smoked fish - which I did, and it rivaled the Gleann meal in its ability to amaze - or the catch of the day - which I also did. That memorable fish was swimming in Dingle Bay at dawn, and by breakfast time, was gently cooked in butter and sitting on my plate, tasting of nothing else on earth. The meals were further enlavished with heaps of that brown bread, and a most gorgeous homemade apple blackbearry jam that tasted of spring.

June/July: I discovered Memrise, thanks to a good friend. I was still on fire with Irish, and looking desperately for a way to keep a hand in on it. Memrise is an excellent way of learning languages. You choose a goal for yourself. I opted for a very low one, so that I'd be more likely to keep at it, and you get little mini-lessons, and reviews. It is fun. It is addicting. It makes one enthusiastic and inclined to run about telling all ones friends and relations about it, so that they sign up, and get addicted and start learning languages too. Of course, I am opting for Irish, Old English and Morse Code. The sister with whom I share my habitation, is learning Italian. Other sisters are opting for German. We cannot, in point of fact, speak to each other in our elementary new languages, but that doesn't keep us from being enthusiastic about it anyway.

I have also been going out for explores in the wild spots at the edge or our little town, preferably near sunset, when the air is cooler and there is a sweetness to it which is sadly lacking during the heat of summer days. And the world goes all dove-blue and old-gold, and the tree stand out like wrought-iron against the gloaming.

Mostly, I go out to the Marsh, which, in spite of its name, is  not very marshy. It is a margin place, where the river pours out into the lake. There are sandy stretches of beach, and scrappy shore-plants growing tenaciously along the spongy bits. There is meadow, and marsh, and river and pools, and finally there is the lake and in amoungst all this mad mix of habitats there are willows and wildflowers, waterfowl and Osprey, Hawks and songbirds. The air is full of the sound of running water and splashing waves, of bird calls, and the sighing of wind through the willows and the grasses. It is a beautiful and timeless place, in which it is easy to stop moving, to sit still, to step outside of the World, and for a quiet space, to lay down one's burdens - big or small - and truly rest. I generally go with a friend from work, a birder, who takes lovely and oddly personal pictures of it all. Thanks to his influence,  I can now name birds I have neither known nor named before and I can identify a small number of them by their songs. I come home from such peregrinations with pockets full of smooth lake stones, and feathers, and pine cones, fleetingly blue crawdad's claws, and paper-thin water-snail shells, ineffably delicate. And I come home home feeling that I am me again, that God is good, and that no matter what happens, I want to live in such a way that my life is a thank you for the sheer staggering beauty He saw fit to lavish on the world.

I have begun to practice watercolouring again. I am in no way an artist, but I take great pleasure in doodling. My little watercolours are very small, sketched very quickly from life, and feature more plants than anything else,






though occasionally, some-
thing with breath and pulse and means of movement. It is both soothing and exciting to take a little art kit along with me, and paint things. There is a great deal of joy in it, even if the result is just simple little thumbnails.



And with that, my tea is calling, and while one can be sustained by beauty alone for a considerable amount of time, the stomach, not to mention the personality, tends to rebel if forced into subjugation for too long. A tip of the hat to all of you, and I hope to return sooner next time.

This is the Moment!

I had to write a poem on 'moment' today. 

I also had to attend a staff meeting today. All library staff for the entire county had to gather themselves together and discuss librarianish things. We had to wear tags (I didn't. I am not a parcel and I do not believe anyone has a right to my name.) that contained our names, a book cover and a coloured border. For the first half of the meeting we sat at a table that matched the colour that border, so that we would be sitting with totally random people. For the second half, we had to sit at a table that matched the book cover, and a completely different set of random people. We had to participate. I have a low threshold of toleration for group activities. So I came home and wrote this:

For just a moment

You captured my attention

I caught your fire.

Gone is the moment

I am bored to distraction.

Have done. Cease fire.

However, today is also the anniversary of the Easter Rebellion, which began on Easter Monday, 1916. The Irish Volunteers took over various key locations in Dublin, with the General  Post Office for their headquarters. Their leader, a poet named Paidraic Pearse, read out the Proclamation of Independence from the steps of the building, though few people paid much attention. For all that, it was a pivotal event in Irish history - an odd, tiny, gallant little uprising that lasted less than a week; but the influence it had was enormous. So I wrote a short little moment poem for that too:

You stand - 

     Brave as joy

     And soldier-tall

You speak - 

     To a Nation

     And none at all

Just a moment - 

     Scarce of notice

     Few to mark

But Ireland - 

     Flames to Freedom

     At that spark.

So there. A comic poem, and one that is a bit more on the serious side. And that is better than I expected to do after a day like today. Five days left.... God help us!  

The Feast of St. Stephen

"Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen..."

That's today - the second day of Christmas, commonly known as St. Stephen's day. In Ireland, this is the day that crazy young lads and lasses dress up eccentrically and go wrenning. I have mentioned this tradition here before, and even posted the Clancy Brothers singing The Wren Song. I didn't mean to mention the wren boys this year, but when I was browsing about in pursuit of a St. Stephen's Day carol, I came across this very brief and quite intriguing bit of interview, mentioning that tradition being kept alive.... in Butte, Montana, of all places:

I also did manage to find a carol appropriate for the day, which delights me excessively, because the last time I attempted this feat, I came up dry. Here is Magpie Lane, singing St. Stephen

And with that, I bid ye all good night.

I Shall Take The Hidden Paths that Run, East of the Moon, West of the Sun

I have been distracted by research. I am wasting hours on pinterest, pinning pictures of ships and fishermen, of water creatures and sea-myths. I am browsing through word lists of Celtiberian and Proto-Celtic, and one very odd one comparing the very few surviving words we know of Galatian, with similiar words in Irish and Turkish. (Yes, I know, but there are a surprising number of words with similar meanings and spellings in those two languages. Now I know, and so do you.) I am looking up articles on commercial fishing communities of coastal California... in the 40s. I have a burning need to know how far north the Spanish settlers managed to get up the US west coast, and how far south the Russians came. I am reading Atlantis-type stories... I would not exactly be lying if I said that I have been writing - some writing has indeed been accomplished in the wake of all of this disparate reading - but it is slight. A distillation, labouriously  extracted, and not yet fit for human consumption.

I have also been doing the occasional doodle. There is this:

which has nothing whatsoever to do with the back-history I am giving my story. It is merely because I re-watched Gladiator  recently, and I love the quote. I was pretty satisfied with it when I was done... and then, I accidentally got a fingerprint on it, so this is a slightly cleaned-up version of the one that is hanging about the old hobbit hole. And, since I was busy fiddling with the picture anyway, I tried some of the fun effects picmonkey allows, and got this too:

Which I found oddly pleasing to look at. It is not at all how the original looks... but I like it, so you are getting 2 version of a doodle this time.

This one, however, sort of has a vague tie-in the what I am working on:

 I call it Our Lady of the Heroes, and will hopefully turn into a full picture, not just a study-sketch, to illustrated a poem entitled Homecoming. It exists, at present, only theoretically, a poem-seed in the soil of my mind. I water it and incredibly delicate green tendrils are beginning to curl up from the ground, but I do not dare to rush the process for  fear of killing my wee plant before it has a chance to live.

I have recently had the chance to watch the Irish music  group The Gloaming in concert, and it was a grand experience. Two fiddlers of impeccable skill and delicacy of touch, a guitarist who drives the music but does not overwhelm it, a pianist whose playing is an addition to the music, and not merely a back-up, and the sean-nós singing of Iarla Ó Lionáird. It was not traditional in the sense that is usually used to describe that particular type of Irish music, but one got the feeling, listing to them playing together, that they were somehow more traditional in their experimentation, than most traditionalists.  They clearly delighted in the music. They loved every note and harmony that they were putting out for us. Sometimes, the music was so spare, it was like being in a medieval hall, listening to a wandering songster. Sometimes, there was a sweet wildness to it - the sort of fairy-music that beguiles the unwary away from their own lives. Sometimes it was just a cèilidh, and incredibly fun. They played in long sets, that made you feel, while you were listening, that the music had been going on since the dawn of time, and that it would continue on forever. And when they finished, you felt as if they had only just started.  It had the same sort of effect on me that the World Pipe Band Competitions have - it inspired me, and made me want to be so much more of a musician than I am.

Here is one of the songs:

I remember reading a poem a very long time ago, featuring, in some manner I cannot recall, a salmon, the the refrain for the poem was the same as the refrain for this song: thugamar féin nn samhradh linn, it is the summer we have brought in. I took great delight in recognising the words here. For the last few days, it keeps popping into my head - very unfortunate in mid-November, especially as I am tired of summer, and would prefer some to sing that they are bringing winter  in.

I realised, after seeing The Gloaming, that in all my world-building, I have neglected music. I go to remedy that.

St. Brendan the Navigator

So, back in the day when I was a wee child, I learned a bit of doggerel that ran like this, "Columbus sailed the ocean blue, in fourteen-hundred, ninety-two." And I was certain that before Columbus, not a single Old World soul had the slightest idea that there was another land across the ocean. Of course, Columbus did not discover the New World - he re-discovered it. Exactly who it was that first found the American continent is up for debate. There is a theory that the Chinese reached the New World in 1421. Indeed, there is a whole book dedicated to the idea. The Vikings, under the leadership of Leif Erickson, almost certainly reached North America in the year 1000. But if you ask the Irish, they will tell you that it was an Irish monk that got here first - sometime during the first half of the 6th century, and that monk is St. Brendan, whose feast day was today.

When Ireland was converted to Christianity by St. Patrick, the Age of Martyrs was passed, and the Faith came into small land at the far edge of the Known World, accompanied by very little in the line of persecution. Many of the Irish, on fire with the zeal of the newly converted, longed for martyrdom, but since that was denied them, they settled instead for something they termed a White Martyrdom - a complete, voluntary renunciation of the World; a continual, daily dying to one's self. There were various methods of accomplishing this. The most common, was simply to go out into the deserts (here used in the old sense of meaning uninhabited) and live in complete simplicity and poverty. The West Coast of Ireland, in particular, is dotted with tiny, dry stone, beehive structures, set up by early monks:

SOURCE

However, another method was one of exile. Some early Irish monks, such as St. Columcille, imposed exile upon themselves, and wandered about as missionaries to the Pagan tribes of Europe. In St. Brendan's case, he became a voyager. He and his monks, 'cast themselves upon the sea' in the small, leather curraghs, which are similar to the boats Irish fishermen can still be found to use. They lived monastic lives, praying, labouring, fishing, enduring the hardships of life upon the sea, and leaving their lives in the hands of God. And at one point, they set sail to the West, in search of the Blessed Realms, which they found after a voyage of seven years. Their adventures are set down in an ancient text, the Navigatio Sancti Brendani.



SOURCE

For a long time, the Navigatio was dismissed as unreliable legend, as it is full of fantastic stories. It told of islands upon which lived giants smiths, who worked at huge forges, the fires of which shot into the sky; islands, big enough for the monks to land upon, but which were actually enormous fish; crystal pillars towering up out of the sea. For all that, it was widely accepted that a land mass of some sort existed out in the wilds of the vast Atlantic Ocean. St. Brendan's Isle showed up reguarly on maps until as late as the 16th century, and there were reported sitings of it into the late 18th century, long after the New World was well on its way to being settled by Europeans.

So, did St.Brendan actually discover America? There is,at present, no way to be certain of it. However, in 1976, a man named Tim Severin re-created the sort of medieval leather boat that St. Brendan would have used to make his legendary voyage.

SOURCE

He and a crew of sailors were able to sail from Ireland to New Foundland in the craft, which proved, at least in theory, that is was certainly possible for a sea-faring people, as the Irish have always been, to have made the journey. He also came up with some very plausible theories to explain some of the more outlandish details recorded in the Navigatio. The easiest way to cross the Atlantic, is to stay as close as possible to known land masses, which means keeping a somewhat northerly bent to the sailing. It also means that the sailors will come very near to Iceland, which is famous - or infamous, depending on your view of the matter - for its volcanoes. The story of the giant smiths is pretty fantastic, but the descriptions of their fires could just as easily be applied to an erupting volcano. Several times during the Brendan Voyage, Severin and his crew encountered great pods of whales, whose backs broke the surface of the sea, so that the water appeared to be dotted with hundreds of islands, so perhaps the story of landing upon the back of an enormous fish is not so far-fetched as all that. And, they saw icebergs as well, which could very well be taken as pillars of crystal be men who had never seen such things before. Tim Severin wrote a book about the adventure, called simply, The Brendan Voyage which I highly recommend, as it is a great, adventuresome book, which often reads like fiction.

Finally, here is the prayers St. Brendan is to have said before he set out on his voyage:

Shall I abandon, O King of mysteries, the soft comforts of home? Shall I turn my back on my native land, and turn my face towards the sea?

Shall I put myself wholly at your mercy, without silver, without a horse, without fame, without honor? Shall I throw myself wholly upon You, without sword and shield, without food and drink, without a bed to lie on? Shall I say farewell to my beautiful land, placing myself under Your yoke?

Shall I pour out my heart to You, confessing my manifold sins and begging forgiveness, tears streaming down my cheeks? Shall I leave the prints of my knees on the sandy beach, a record of my final prayer in my native land?

Shall I then suffer every kind of wound that the sea can inflict? Shall I take my tiny boat across the wide sparkling ocean? O King of the Glorious Heaven, shall I go of my own choice upon the sea? O Christ, will You help me on the wild waves?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here I am, back by popular demand! Well, no, not really, although Amanda did send an email asking when I planned to start blogging again. However, since St. Patrick's Day is one of my favourite holidays, it seemed a good time to come out of hibernation. So here are some facts about St. Patrick's Day you might not have known.

- St. Patrick was born in Kilpatrick, Scotland. However, he was not Scottish, but rather a Roman.

- The first St. Patrick's Day Parade was held in America. Some folk say that it was in 1737 in Boston, and that the Charitable Irish Society put it on. Others say that it was held in New York City in 1762, and that it was Irish soldiers serving in the British army who were responsible.

- On March 16, 1793, George Washington’s General Order to his troops granted St. Patrick’s Day to be a holiday.

- St. Patrick's Day is a national holiday on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean, due to the high number of Irish refugees who settled there.

- In Great Britain, shamrocks are traditionally distributed to the Irish Guards by the Queen. This year, however, they were presented by Katherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

- St. Patrick's uncle was St. Martin of Tours, the Roman soldier who gave part of his cloak to our Lord, who was disguised as a beggar.

I always go all-out in the celebration of St. Patrick's Day. I usually wear this:

It is a very beautifully pleated kilted skirt, in a colour I refer to as 'saffron, and my sisters call orange. This particular outfit is based off the Irish Guards pipers' uniforms. This year, I also decided to wear shamrocks in my hair. To my great dismay, I could not find any convincing artificial shamrocks, nor even clover, to wear, and so fell back on making my own. It was surprisingly easy, and they turned out surprisingly real-looking.

All you need is some stiff green paper for the leaves, ordinary white copier paper for the blossoms, and some wire for the stems:

It doesn't show up very well in the pictures, but I have drawn shamrock shapes on the green paper. I cut them out, and gently shape them:

Then I punch a small whole in the center with a push pin, place a large dollop of Elmer's glue over the whole, and thread the wire through, curling the end slightly so it does not pull out:

For the blossoms, curl the paper around itself to form a very small cone:

Flatten the cones, and then fold them in to thirds:

Cut them into petal shapes:

Carefully unfold the paper:

Put a large dollop of glue in the center of the flowers, tread the stems through, and shape the petals a bit to make them look natural:

And here is the finished result:



Of course, the day is also celebrated with corn beef and cabbage, Irish coffees, and listening to Irish folk music - the Clancy Brothers usually, since they are my favourites. However, the Wolfe Tones are quite good too. Here they are singing Hail Glorious St. Patrick:

On the Second Day of Christmas....

I have the rather ambitious intention of trying to do a post for each day of the twelve days of Christmas, finishing on the Feast of the Epiphany. Ideally, I would like to post something particular to each day - a song or a carol if I can find one. Today is St. Stephen's Day, and I had originally intended to publish a clip of a very old carol called St. Stephen Was a Clerk. Unfortunately, though the tune seems to be fairly well known in certain circles (i.e. medieval and renaissance musicians) diligent research did not turn up a single clip of the tune, other than as an mp3 sample. This being the case, I am posting a more flippant clip of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem singing The Wren Song.

The tradition of the hunting of the wren, which is described briefly at the beginning if the clip, is an old Irish custom. The story behind it is that a wren was responsible for betraying St. Stephen to his murders - and also for betraying the Irish during a key battle, by beating its wings against a shield, and rousing the enemy.

Battle of the Boyne

On this day, in 1690, I am sorry to report, the forces of William of Orange defeated the forces of King James II of Ireland and VII of Scotland, at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland. It severe blow to the Catholics in the countries of Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales; and to the young Jacobite movement, that had grown up with King James. Usually, about this time each year, it will be in the news that sectarian violence is breaking out in Northern Ireland.... again, and there will be some rueful remarks about the Irish Catholics and Protestants being unable to get along. Most of the violence is a result of Orange Parades, i.e. parades of Protestant Orangemen marching along through Catholic neighborhoods, celebrating the victory of William at the Battle of the Boyne. The Catholics, not unreasonably, find this incredibly offensive, and the Irish being the Irish, rioting ensues until the marching season is safely over.

Being both a Catholic, and a Jacobite sympathiser, I am posting the following clip, from the Clancy Brother's Carnegie Hall performance, just so there is not doubt whatsoever what my opinion of the matter is!

St. Brigid of Kildare

Today is the feast day of St. Brigid of Kildare, who, with St. Patrick, is the patron saint of Ireland. I honoured the day in my usual fashion - fashion being a rather significant word here. I decked myself out in a very Irish ensemble, modeled after these lads here. Obviously, I did not present to the world quite so military an appearance, since what I was wearing is properly a kilted skirt, rather than a kilt, and had to be satisfied with a dark green sweater, rather than the fine jackets they are sporting, but the effect, I fancy, is quite nearly as eye-catching.

St. Brigid is one of those saints around whom is woven a tapestry of legends, and one gets a picture of an astonishingly holy woman whose boundless charity and genuine niceness made her very pleasant company indeed. This website is a good place to go for a sample of some of the more common stories told about St. Brigid. I think one of the things I find most endearing about her, though, is her hospitality. Gaelic people tend to have a very high code of hospitality, but she rather outdoes herself in honouring it. Among the many miracles she is said to have performed, there are several in which she turned various liquids into beer to serve to her guests. Indeed, there is a prayer-poem attributed to her, that runs thusly: "I'd like a great lake of beer for the King of kings. I would like to be watching heaven's family drinking it through all eternity." And if that is not enough to endear the hardest of hearts to the Mary of the Gael, I do not know what will!

The Beauty of the World....

"Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun...."

I saw something that made those words by the Irish poet, Padraic Pearse, popped in to my head today. No, it wasn't a squirrel, or a ladybug, or a rabbit. It was just a tree and marvelous fall sky.

After a couple weeks of near-record high temperatures, the weather has suddenly turned, and become - well, not quite cold, but definitely chilly. We have had almost of week of rain, and very dramatic rain it has been too. There has been a good deal of lightening, and thunder. For a few days, the rain came down so hard, that it made a lively tattoo on the roof, and shattered itself to bits when it struck the road. There was hail once or twice, and a great deal of wind and commotion. It was delightful.

That particular weather system is being pushed out of the area, and we are supposed to me having somewhat warmer weather, with a good deal more sunshine. Today, however, though the rain had stopped, it was still prodigiously overcast. The sky was grey - that goes without saying - but it was not that flat, unbroken grey that stretches from horizon to horizon without variety. It was a sky jostled with great billows of deep smoke and violet, and a curious colour as close to blue as it is to grey. There were long, calm streaks of paler hues: dove, and cream and pearl. And, in one or two spots the clouds pulled themselves so thin, that ethereal blue pools appeared.

It was against this quintessentially autumn sky that I saw the tree. It was a maple tree, with small, delicate leaves, like bits of lace. It was flanked by two birches, whose branches had been turned into living gold by the cold. They were very beautiful, indeed, but the maple, towering above them, was lovelier still. For it hand not just turned to gold, but into a living flame, full of every shade of fire, from palest yellow to crimson. It burned against the riotous grey sky in singular glory, and at the sight of it, my heart was shaken by great joy, too.

And the Word for Today Is...

.... Idiolect.

It is a handy word, that is, meaning a distinctive, individual form of speech. At least, I find it rather handy, but then, I am rather idiolectic in my speech. I commonly use obscure words, like bole for tree trunk, or ugsome for something horrible, or stravage for wandering about. I have picked up a fair number of Scottish or Irish phrases, words and pronunciations, which I use daily without realising that I do it. I have lived in California my whole life, and yet have an odd accent that is frequently taken for Canadian by Americans... and a Canadian I talked to once, was sure I was from Newfoundland. Add to all of this a tendency to quote from a wide variety of sources, ranging from Gilbert and Sullivan, to The Pirates of the Caribbean, and one could say that I have practically developed my own dialect. Fortunately for me, my family and friends share this tendency, so we understand each other perfectly.