Monday, 21st May

Today is to be about gloom and doom, at least in the Irish Celtic world and is  taken from the Morrigan's trio of goddesses - Badb Catha foretelling of the future.  Okay I have just thumbed through facebook news and came on the fact that the Gulf Stream is slowing down and will bring with this catastrophe worse stormy winters and very hot summers, with droughts and rising sea in other parts of the world.  

To be honest I love the Celtic world and it came to mind with the big crows that fly down and eat the bird seed every morning, I look at their ugliness, these carrion birds and yet, I cannot but be in love with their ungainly flight and walk, and their babes being reared in the copse at the back.  The way they greet me every morning with harsh notes, their blackness against the pure new green of the world.  The little flock of sparrows we have in the garden bounce at the feet of these giant bird gods.

"Then she delivers a prophecy of the eventual end of the world, "foretelling every evil that would be therein, and every disease and every vengeance. Wherefore then she sang this lay below."

What do you see in the song/poem below, is it not a weird echo of our own world, and was homosexuality such a sin then?   'reaver' as a word seemed to have arrived in the 12th century, so these Irish extracts can be dated late.

                                              I shall not see a world Which will be dear to me:
                                                               Summer without blossoms,
                                                                Cattle will be without milk,

Women without modesty,
Men without valour.
Conquests without a king...

Woods without mast.
Sea without produce...

False judgements of old men.
False precedents of lawyers,
Every man

a betrayer.
Every son a reaver.
The son will go to the bed of his father,
The father

will go to the bed of his son.
Each his brother's brother-in-law.
He will not seek any woman outside his

house...
An evil time,
Son will deceive his father,
Daughter will deceive...

The little lamb 'chops' gallivant with sweet abandon on the bank, running to and fro with little leaps of joy. I cannot look at a sweet lamb without thinking of their future and am always glad they have no inkling of it.  But there is an opposite optimistic verse as well, which was sung after a particularly victorious battle, the Morrigan trio were after all war goddesses........

                                                              Peace up to heaven.
                                                              Heaven down to earth.
                                                              Earth beneath heaven,
                                                              Strength in each,
                                                              A cup very full,
                                                              Full of honey;
                                                              Mead in abundance.
                                                              Summer in winter...

It looks good in Irish as well!  thank you Wikipedia for supplying a 'thought for today'