Re-blogged from Terri Windling's beautiful blog - Myth and Moor.  

A Dartmoor Beltane

Since one of the underlying themes of Myth & Moor pertains to folklore in art and life, the folkloric celebration of winter's end here in Chagford seems right on topic. Last year, we held a public May Day Procession, and a  grand green time was had by all  -- but we haven't yet got enough volunteer organizers to run a public event every year, so the next one is scheduled for 2017. (If you're local, mark your calendars.)

In order to keep the thread of the ritual aspect of May Day unbroken during this inbetween year, a few of us gathered in a quieter way to call the Jack and the Obby Oss in from the wild -- marking the end of winter with pipe and drum, poetry and prayers, with mischief, mead, and merriment. Here is a taste of the day: a story in pictures, folklore come to life.

The Obby Oss emerges from the trees, to be welcomed and smudged, or blessed, by the smoke of white sage......and then the whole gathering is smudged as the Oss enters our circle.

The piper plays, a drumbeat sounds, and three women in green (representing the goddess of spring in her triple aspect: crone, maiden, and mother) lead a simple Beltane ceremony, addressing the human and more-than-human communities that share the land. I won't go into the ceremony itself, for mythic things are also private things in this and many other sacred traditions -- but it involves gratitude for life, re-balancing oneself with the rhythms of the natural world, music, and laughter. Always laughter -- for as the Hopi in Arizona say, no ceremony can properly begin until somebody has laughed. Joy and ribaldry are a part of life too.

The ceremony is simply, short, and includes everyone in the gathering, from the youngest, strapped to her mother's back, to the oldest of a family in which three generations are present.  Then the Piper breaks the circle...

...leading the way over a stream...and through a gate...

...and up the slope of a field full of sheep. Lambs frolic on the hill, or chase their mothers bleating for drinks of milk, reminders of spring's fertility, new life, and new beginnings.

The Obby Oss leaps and frolics too,  jaws a-clacking and bells a-jingling. The sheep and lambs give him wide berth. Sometimes he's a frightening creature, and sometimes comical and rather endearing.

We crest the hill and turn on to a village street, the pipes leading the way. The street is quiet and only a few come to their doors to watch the Oss dance by, spreading the "luck of the May" from house to house with every jingling step. At the outskirts of the village is an old stone barn. The Horned Man stops, opens the door, and the raggle-taggle parade goes through...and out another door into a field, where the Beltane fire stands ready.

But first, before the evening festivities begin, the ceremony must be properly closed off: with prayers,  the ritual passing of the mead, and the formal thanking of the Oss. He disappears into the trees and won't be seen again until next year.

And then the Beltane "need fire" is lit.

Now the merry-making begins! Shared food is spread over tables decorated with jars of flowers from the woods. Beer, wine, and homemade mead flow freely (May Eve is a drunken affair by longtradition), while friends and neighbors catch up on village news, children play on an outdoor trampoline, dogs chase balls through the grass and stormclouds threaten but never break.

Howard returns from the Otherworld where he'd been transformed into the spirit of the Oss. He is wide-eyed, exhausted and sweat-soaked, his faced still blackened by masking chalk; the transition takes time, and while he's in it, he's a creature of the In-Between.

The willow frame worn by the Jack in the Green sits empty by the fire, crowned with leaves. Last year a frame like this, worn by our Jack, was entirely covered in greenery, then burned in the fire at the end of the event. This year, the frame acquires its greenery and flowers bit by bit. All are invited to decorate the Jack; all are invited to be the Jack. A bare winter wreath hangs on the frame, and each of us ties scrolls of paper to it with green ribbon and string, containing all the things we wish to leave behind as the old season turns into the new. The wreath will be burned at the tail end of the night, and all our old troubles with it.

A group of drummers gathers by the fire to play for all who dare to dance the Jack. Howard is one of those drummers but he's also eager to to dance the Jack himself -- so he passes the drum, enters the frame, lifts it up (it's heavy!), and tap-dances his way around the fire like a leafy Fred Astaire.

Jason removes his horns to have a go. He was the Jack for the public parade last year, strong enough to carry the frame with ease...

...but women too are dancing this year. Here's Sarah, dancing with joy...

And Rowan...

And Susie...

And even Susie's daughter. Too small to lift the frame by herself, but fiercely independent, she sits inside the Jack for a spell and then crawls out, satisfied.

Andy, our piper, takes a turn, and when he's halfway around the fire he brings his wife, Nomi, and their child into the Jack and the three of them dance together.

Alan Lee takes a turn around the fire...

....and then his daughter Virginia does as well. One by one, throughout the evening, everyone who wants to dance the Jack takes part, helped into the frame by Sarah and Ruth, spurred on by the drumbeat and our cheers.

I'm still convalescing from a serious illness, and I know I cannot lift the Jack; I content myself with watching and cheering, though I really want to dance. Howard can tell (he knows me well), so he pulls me up to take a turn. "We'll do it together," he says. "I'll be your strength."  And so I dance too.

And now the story must end, for although the celebration carried long into the night, I didn't last much past dusk, and those starlight tales are not mine to tell.

Today, the sun is bright and it's warm at last. It finally feels like spring. Did we really drum up this glorious weather? Magic isn't as direct as that. Magic is the warmth that binds friends, neighbors, and the living earth together...and that's the luck of the May.

        Drumming Winter Away
         by Jane Yolen

        Boom, da-boom
         the brrr of the year,
         the burring of skin
         stretched ear to ear.
         The grin of spring,
         the ground of spite,
         the rise of fern,
         the shortened night.

         The well-ruled month,
         the lengthened day,
         less time for sleep
         more time for play.
         The pearling buds,
         the shafts of green,
         the fuzz on trees,
         as twigs all preen.

        The waft of perfume
         in the air,
         the warp and weft
         of spring weave there.
         Boom, da-boom,
         we beat the drum
         for spring to come.
         For spring to come.

The photographs here were taken by David Wyatt, Susie Violette, Jason of England, Suzi Crockford (the hawthorn tree) and me. The poem by Jane Yolen is copyright © 2016. All rights reserved.

Hedgerow Hedonism

Spring is springing, on and off - actually for the last few days it's been very much off, we had frost, snow,  and hail yesterday.  In the short interlude when spring was definitely springing there was much activity in the hedgerows hereabouts.

Some have simply being practising their gymnastics, others engaging in activities more typically associated with spring.... and there were SO MANY OF THEM! Literally everywhere you looked in the hedges hereabouts there were Bloody Nosed Beatles making merry.

They are called 'Bloody Nosed Beetles' because if they feel themselves to be in danger they exude droplets of what looks like blood in order to deter predators. The hemolymph is apparently bitter tasting (I wonder which scientist tried it!) and is a deterrent to birds who like their pray live, as it makes the beetle look as if it's been squashed.

These beetles are flightless so you can often see them walking across the lanes or in the grass in fields. I've never seen so many on one day before, but I suspect that's because I haven't been paying attention. Having seen beetle sex in one hedge on one morning I'm now seeing it everywhere!

Beetle society is clearly quite broad-minded!

All the other indicators of a slowly unfolding spring are here too, I caught foxy waiting by the hedge for whatever pickings might come his way.

The Robins are having their usual battles for territory. This one plumping himself up, I think to show his opponent how impressive he is, but he might just have been cold.

Here is his singularly unimpressed opponent. They had a lengthy scuffle over ownership of our chicken run earlier, a prized territory as it gets daily sprinkled with lovely organic mixed corns.

The byways, fields and moors are slowly greening, even in howling wind and sleet they are inexorably coming back to life.

And as usual, Daisy is turning whatever happens to be in front of her into a good thing! There are many things I can learn from this dog (you may remember the lesson in blackberry picking) and simply making the most of everything that is right here, right now, is definitely one of them.

Spring Singing with Birds

“Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops at all.” ― Emily Dickinson

My heart leaps with joy at every sunshine filled morning; the last ecstatic warbles and trills of the returning dawn chorus are drifting through my tightly closed curtains and then, as I realise that once again the sun is shining, suddenly I'm SO HAPPY to be awake! This is in stark contrast to winter mornings, where all things considered, I prefer to be asleep. Spring is springing, hurrah!

If you look among the trees you can see the first small signs arrive as Hawthorn calls forth the green.

Everyone is busy already. I've always wondered what the tapping was in the trees along our lane, It's definitely not a woodpecker, their drumming, hammering peck is much faster than this and far, far louder. They live in the valley below us and two of them are making sweet woodpecker music this spring pretty much non-stop. I digress - I knew it was a small bird repeatedly pecking or banging something but I didn't know what.

I'm pretty sure he's a Nuthatch and what he's banging is a hazel nut.

There are secret words, sacred words, full of love and honouring that I feel on my tongue when the sun comes out, they fill up my mouth and burst out in a morning song of happiness that joins the birds in praising the morning. It had rained so relentlessly for so interminably long that I had forgotten that the sun could ever come out. I had forgotten to remember spring, to hope for spring. This morning it felt as though even the trees were opening their mouths to pour out ecstatic song.

They seemed to be mimicking birds in other ways too... can you see that? It was even more beak and eye like in the flesh.

The Spring Equinox approaches, the year is uncoiling, unwinding itself from the last drips of a wet winter's sleep towards the day when day and night are or equal length and spring, unleashed, gallops forwards towards summer.  We stand in the place between the dark half and the light half of the year, between down and up, between snowdrops and daffodils, the place of both.

Much of the yellow is already out; there have been primroses lifting their delicate yellow faces to the sky since late December, Daffodils and Lesser Celandine since February (not so unusual) and I saw a dandelion today!

Happy Spring Equinox, may your uncoiling and unwinding bring you joy.

A Gift - Not for Vegetarians.

I was gifted a day...

A day in the company of lovely women and magical birds, or even lovely birds and magical women. Thank you Elen Sentier (above with a Tawny Owl) for the gift and Danielle Earp (below) for being so generous with bird sharing. We were at Dartmoor Hawking, just down the road from here, with Martin Whitely who trains and flies the birds. 

The Hawk above is Agravaine, He's an adult Harris Hawk. The Hawk below is Dave, he's also a Harris Hawk but a young one, hence the stripy feathers. He'll go brown over the coming months. Hawks trained for hawking are raised from a chick in captivity, they are imprinted on their keeper and seem to identify with humans generally as tribe and to like their company. These hawks also include Martin's three dogs in this notion of tribe, as the dogs do them. Enormous pointers bound up to small but potentially vicious birds and snuffle at them in a friendly, waggy sort of a way and leave unscarred. It was incredibly beautiful spending a day with three such disparate species all co-operating happily together. Well, sort of co-operating... 

I happened to mention to Dave that whilst I like Rabbit well enough I really, really like Duck. So dear Dave went after one for me and accidentally fell in the water. Hawks are not designed for swimming. 

When Martin fished him off his soggy perch on a stone by the side of the river he was shivering and miserable. As we started for home it began to snow and he shivered and shook even more, so I opened my jacket and sheltered him inside it, in the warmth of me. He put his head down and snuggled in and I distinctly heard him say that he liked me. I like him too. In fact he's the nicest (only) Hawk I've ever really met. Apparently Elen and Danielle spent much of the day poking each other and laughing at me as I gazed at Dave in blatant adoration. I didn't even notice. 

When we got back to the barn he was blow dried. I missed the photo where his entire expression clearly said 'I luurve being blow dried'. Who wouldn't; when you've fallen in the water on a snowy March day on Dartmoor and you can't change your clothes! 

The rest of the day unfolded in similar vein. Dave saw plenty of Rabbits, he definitely looked straight at them and seemed to say to himself "oh look, there's a rabbit. How dull." Eventually the dogs decided that this was too frustrating for words and killed one themselves. Even when the rabbit was put directly under Dave's beak he couldn't find it interesting. It was incredibly funny for me, but I suspect supremely frustrating for Martin who is trying to train young Dave to be the hunter he was born to be but clearly doesn't need to be as he is fed bits of chicken by passing women who want him to sit on their wrist. 

Rabbit for dinner was delicious, gratitude for all that was in the pot. 

We Are The World

The only relationship of real power we will ever have is our relationship to the Earth. We are her, she is us, literally and metaphorically. Everything is made up of the same stuff, Shamanic Elders have been telling us this for thousands of years and Quantum Theorists agree; we are microcosm of the macrocosm and all that we are is writ large in our world.

We ARE the Earth expressing herself, imagining herself, experiencing herself, knowing herself.
So consider this - how are you today? How is your mind, your body, your spirit? How are you taking care of that world?

Which songs are you singing?

What do you love?

What have you given birth to?

How is your inner world?

Whose air do you breath?

Who are your neighbours?

Do you know the tidal ebb and flow of the moon in your body?

What are you connected to?

Who are you and what are you here to do?

The way you do something is the way you do everything - so if you are taking care of the world that is you (harmoniously, organically, carefully, lovingly) then you are both directly and indirectly taking care of the world that is all of us.