Imbolc 2011 - a reading (on YouTube)
At Imbolc, the Iron Queen remains enthroned in the underworld. In the world of men, the Corn Mother's grief casts a pale pall across the land. Pure, white, sparkling tears drift softly down her face, clinging to the ground as a memorial as her desperate search continues. The frozen landscape mirrors her lamentation. She wanders the wood instead of fertile fields. Bare branches form the lacework of her mourning veil.
Perched like slices of a moonless night among the barren trees, a chorus of crows cruelly cries a coronach for the Rape of Prosperina. In their underground lairs, bears and badgers stir, presaging her triumphal return. Until that hallowed day, harts shelter in sylvan glades and glens, their flanks turned against her mother's chilling wails of gloom. Coyotes prowl the gardens unhindered, leaving only pawprints in the snow.
In secret passageways beneath the earth, a chthonic entourage awakens. Sprites and faeries don chartreuse and silver to celebrate the return to light of the Majestic Queen of Shades. Her remaining curses will go undelivered until Samhain. For a short, bright season, the dead rest peacefully in their graves.
Soon her runners will spring forth, scattering crocuses and snowdrops along her processional, carpeting it imperial and virgin white. Little do they know her innocence is no longer Orphean, forever stained by Eurydice's blood.
In the valleys of Goidelic mountains, deep among the holly and the yew, Green Men laugh as the petty, deific drama plays out again this year. In the fields and folds and sheltered byres, young mothers pay no mind. Their lambs dance and kick within warm, winter wombs, dreaming of the verdant, Elysian fields that will greet them when they emerge.
Huddled in mead halls, young warriors while away the winter days honing weapons to an icy sheen against the impending thaw. While dozing by the fire, old men harvest memories of long lost maidens like poppies entangled with the barley in the fall.
Perched like slices of a moonless night among the barren trees, a chorus of crows cruelly cries a coronach for the Rape of Prosperina. In their underground lairs, bears and badgers stir, presaging her triumphal return. Until that hallowed day, harts shelter in sylvan glades and glens, their flanks turned against her mother's chilling wails of gloom. Coyotes prowl the gardens unhindered, leaving only pawprints in the snow.
In secret passageways beneath the earth, a chthonic entourage awakens. Sprites and faeries don chartreuse and silver to celebrate the return to light of the Majestic Queen of Shades. Her remaining curses will go undelivered until Samhain. For a short, bright season, the dead rest peacefully in their graves.
Soon her runners will spring forth, scattering crocuses and snowdrops along her processional, carpeting it imperial and virgin white. Little do they know her innocence is no longer Orphean, forever stained by Eurydice's blood.
In the valleys of Goidelic mountains, deep among the holly and the yew, Green Men laugh as the petty, deific drama plays out again this year. In the fields and folds and sheltered byres, young mothers pay no mind. Their lambs dance and kick within warm, winter wombs, dreaming of the verdant, Elysian fields that will greet them when they emerge.
Huddled in mead halls, young warriors while away the winter days honing weapons to an icy sheen against the impending thaw. While dozing by the fire, old men harvest memories of long lost maidens like poppies entangled with the barley in the fall.
© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III
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ReplyDeleteNotes and asides:
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The Iron Queen is Persephone, whose reputation as such derived from the Orpheus cycle and her treatment of Eurydice. In older myths dating to the Odyssey, she goes unnamed, referred to only as the Majestic Queen of Shades. In that cycle, she implements the curses of living men upon the souls of the dead. Such a sweet young lass. The Rape of Prosperina is the Roman version of Persephone's abduction by Hades. The Corn Mother is Demeter, whose flowers are the poppies sprinkled among the barley at the harvest.
Imbolc is the cross-quarter celebration of Celtic spring, falling midway between the winter solstice and spring equinox. Its name derives from the lactating of the ewes that begins in mid-winter. In Ireland, it's celebrated as St. Brigid's Day. In England, Candlemas. In the US, it's no coincidence that Groundhog Day falls nearby as the predictor of the end of winter. That tradition is based on German folklore regarding bears and badgers stirring as a sign of impending spring.
Sometimes the unfamiliar words are chosen purposefully. Goidelic (a branch of Celtic languages including Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic and Manx) and coronach (a shrieked Scottish dirge) both have Celtic origins. Chthonic (related to the underworld), Orphean (enchanting) and Elysian (blissful or delightful) are Greek. And sometimes, they serve only as a playground of sound for when I read them aloud.
And why coyotes? Because I think I've heard them howling at night in the park for the first time this winter.
Picture notes:
ReplyDeleteSince before the first of the year, we've seen huge murders of crows all over the county, when driving to the grocery store or as Karen was coming home from work. Then this weekend, when we wanted a picture of them (about the only image we could capture down here), they all disappeared. We got lucky in that Saturday we took a shortcut back from the home improvement store and ran across a moderate murder in a barren tree. We ducked home for the camera and found they were still there when we returned, sitting pretty as you please, with many more on the power lines.
Karen used a dry brush effect in PhotoShop to enhance the image, and moved in a couple crows to better fill the frame.