Category: Etaine na Preachain

[Edited, May 2017: I had a paragraph here about a video, but the link I had is broken. I’ll ask my friend Zoe, who made the video, if she still has it.]

I wrote this sometime in the early aughts, but I can’t find exactly when–and if I wait to find that information, this won’t get posted. So, I’m posting it. [EDIT, May 2015: I located the original manuscript! I wrote it between Feb. 20 (first draft) and March 1 (last edit), 2002. I’m pleased that my “sometime in the early aughts” guess was correct.]

Fuse

I beg, amid this day’s frustrations
Beg, O You who pattern pathways
Beg of you your secret sacred
Taste of truth, of sure and certain
Yes, your concentrated influx–
Sudden blaring pulsing fusion
Light-and-music, shells-and-blossoms
Sap-evaporate-infusion
Straight to vein-spike bee-hummed starshine
Shatter skull and reassemble
Kiss my fury gone with glory
Wrap me tight in all that’s holy
Slide molecular through mundane cares,
Remind me: Here’s What Matters.
Words and fibers, these I spin now
Breath and meat are what I’m made of
Silver-falling fertile springtime
Rain on long-parched fragrant soil
Rootlets tremble, jagged, fractal
Feed me free-born flesh and apples
Corded forearms, hammer-wielding,
Raising skill and crops and striking
Magma-stirring stones set just so.
Frozen crystals splitting sunrise,
Synapse-crackle, strong embraces,
Drums and honey, woolen prickle,
Wooden, copper, cobalt, amber
Bleached-white bone and deerskin supple
Scales soft rustle, silent feathers
Sudden-indrawn breath for shrieking
Crow-beak pierces through the curtain
Song and laughter, my voice gifting
Tears of gratitude, my treasure
Night and fire, silken beauty
Brainstem-clutching pale Muse grasping
Pre-dawn dreams: I am beloved.
Wild-eyed kin call me their bard,
and nothing less than howling loss
of poetry itself shall break me.

-Simone Parrish / Etaíne na Preachain, February 20-March 1, 2002

My friend Morag recently discovered that a song I wrote for our Celtic reenactment group a few years ago can be sung as a round with itself, and woven into another piece we already sing as a round. (We don’t sing that other piece quite like the examples I’ve found online, though–we’ve somehow turned it from three lines to four, and added a second verse.)

My song, “Quarter Days,” is rarely sung all at once. It forms part of our quarter-day celebrations, the four big holidays on the cross-quarter points (between the solstices and equinoxes) at the spokes of the Wheel of the Year. Usually I only sing the verses for the specific holiday–the Beltaine ones for our Maypole, etc. I originally wrote the piece for Lughnasadh, which is in August, so even though the Celtic year begins at Samhain I think of the Lughnasadh verses as the beginning of the song.

There’s no recording of this, yet, but as we work on the weaving we might work on recording, too. EDIT: I made a recording! It has some sound issues (I was recording on a built-in laptop mic while my dishwasher was running and my heat was on) but I don’t have the skillz to fix it and I figured something was better than nothing.

Quarter Days

Come we now to mark Lughnasadh,
Three quarters ’round the Wheel.
Now give we thanks for tribe and allies
As battle bruises heal.

Hearth and harvest, welcome brothers
And sisters to our feast.
We’ve fought with valor, shared our treasures;
The crow comes home to nest.

Chorus (2x):
‘Neath our feet the earth is turning.
Stars dance their shining whirl.
The fire in our hearts bright-burning
Feed our passion, light our world.

Samhain night is now upon us.
We turn to the new year.
Our honored dead may walk among us;
The Otherworld draws near.

Darkness gathers. Winter’s waking,
as since the Wheel began.
Into his arms all fears now taking
So burns our Wickerman.

[Chorus, 2x]

Imbolc draws us back together.
Winter’s grip is loosening.
Forge-flames dream of warmer weather
Through cold nights’ slumbering.

Share we now what we’ve created,
Our craft and skill we bring.
Let joyous work be unabated.
Through Brigit this we sing.

[Chorus, 2x]

Beltaine’s beauty blooms before us.
Desire warms the world,
Bursting forth in joyous chorus,
New buds and leaves unfurled.

Sap has risen; now breath quickens,
Life’s forces flowing strong.
Wrap the Maypole wreathed in ribbons.
Dance to life’s sacred song.

[Chorus, 2x]

Edit, March 26, 2015: At Gulf Wars, we were thinking we might want to do something particular to mark the Vernal Equinox, and I wrote this, which means I guess I’m on deck for the rest of the solar holidays, too. (I didn’t end up singing it there, though. We did an egg-hunt, with prizes.)

Balanced days are now returning
Tilting back toward the sun
Light is waking, stretching, growing
Dreams hatch through work well-done

Plant we now for future’s reaping
Make plans for summer’s height
Longhall’s rhythm, strong hearts beating
Bright friendship warms the night.

Edit, August 2016: We had some losses as a tribe this year, so our Lughnasadh ritual focussed on the cycle of loss and growth. I added these verses to the Lughnasadh ones.

Our hearts grieve from long-fought battles
And weep for absent friends.
Well-stored crops and slaughtered cattle
Take us through the Wheel’s next bend.

Each night’s fire feeds our story.
Each life that starts anew
Feeds on every former glory
Strengthening the cauldron’s stew.

Scattered seed grows corn to feed us.
Through the dark we reach the dawn.
All that’s been has led us hither;
All that’s here will lead us on.

(Those last two lines are drawn from Robin Williamson’s For Three Of Us, which has become my traditional last-night-of-Pennsic song.)