Life in the village

Yesterday I talked to three people ;) It makes me laugh at the pathetic note I have just achieved, for I was so happy planting my beans into the big plastic gardening bags, a job well done.  Now on the path today a small pot of sweet peas stand from a friend. 

Who were the three people, well my son for one in Bath,  Nigel across the road for another.  I  had  just cut down the top of a hawthorn bush that has grown exponentially over the winter rains outside the fencing at the front, there are at least five of them.  It was David who had drawn my attention to them because he offered to trim them.  I talked to Nigel and offered him the cuttings for his goats, we all worry about his wife in this lockdown as she has to have treatment at the hospital but it seems she is still getting it.  I also worry about his goats and sheep as well, because every day he sets off with Sasha his dog and a plastic sack over his shoulder to cut down more branches for his livestock.

Then Jo phoned in the afternoon, to talk and as always she made me laugh about the tale of the large pork chops from Daisys.  The trouble with Daisy Garden Centre that having grasped the nettle of online selling and branching out into food, they have overstretched their capabilities.  And now everything gets put in one box, i.e.  frozen dripping pork chops with seed packets and of course sweet pea pot plants, I just knew she would have to offer me one of the dozen plant pots.

So we move from day to day in our worlds, cold today but the sun is trying to break through, perhaps it will be warm enough when Irene comes to talk over the wall at 3 p.m. But hopefully it will not be too long because I don't have much news!

Celtic Heads

My avatar pictures is the above carving, basically because I love the fierceness of his face and his individuality. Also I hope he scares the trolls away!  He was the Romano-British symbol of power above the door as people entered the Romano-British temple in Bath.  Considered to be one of the finest carvings from the Celtic time, he represents power  and symbolic meanings but he also represents that Roman gods over the British people had equal representation with their own gods.  No use frightening the local populace with bad assed gods from one's  own dynasty of gods better too amalgamate them.

A wild and woolly Celt, with the added trappings of a Roman god.  At first you mistake him for a  male Gorgon though in actual fact the Gorgons were female, but notice that he has wings, ears and is that two snakes wreathed round his beard? And to quote from 'The Waters of the Gap' written by R.J.Stewart in the 1980s you will see a whole map of symbolism could be deduced from this mask.

"The stylised head of the Celtic Sun God, Belinus or Bel, identified by the Greeks and Romans with Apollo.  His waving flaming hair discloses his wings and ears, typical solar attributes for an all-seeing, all-hearing god.  Although the head is constructed in such a way as to be a full face in flattened relief, similar to metalwork of the period.  The presence of two intertwined snakes around the lower part might represent a torque. The Celtic neck ornament of magical power, which symbolised the union with the forces of nature"

Stewart goes on to say that the head might be  that of Bladud, the founding king of Bath, but this story is given at a much later date by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century.  But Bladud and the pigs is another fascinating story of myth.

This is a better photo than mine they have sharpened the image.

Its early interpretation in the hands of male archaeologists, rests on classical education, in other words, British 'native' people were inferior (a bit like women;) and it was the teaching hand of the Roman elite who had this made.  Given that it was made in Britain, and is a fine example of carving, think Celtic and the marvellous stories that had passed down through the ages.  And perhaps thank the Romans for addressing the fact that conquering was not about forcing one's gods on the conquered.  Though in fairness I will quote Richmond and Toynbee........

"The Gorgon' states in the clearest possible terms that these pedimental sculptures were the work of a Celtic artist, trained in a classical school, but transposing the themes that he had learnt there into the native idiom of his race.  Part of that idiom is the subtle blending in the masks of snakes, locks and wings - so subtle that it is by no means easy at first glance, to pick out the six uncrested heads of the female snakes.  And it takes some thought to disentangle the two crested males, which are knotted together below the 'gorgon's chin"

There is another myth to be thought of as well.  The Celts had a reverence for the heads of their enemies, in many places you will find just carvings of severed heads.  In the temple of Rocquepertuse there were niches carved out in the pillars for the skulls of their defeated enemies..

And of course there is the famous Bran story, when the head of Bran was carried to London, he talked to the party escorting him, and was only silent when he was buried in London (and no more plague fell upon the land!) This is a Welsh tale from The Mabinogion and can be attributed Celtic mythology.

"Take my head, and carry it to the White Hill in London and bury it there with the face towards France.  You will be long on the road, and spend seven years feasting at Hardllech, with the Birds of Rhiannon singing to you, and the head will be good as a companion as it ever was."

The head was facing Europe as a national guardian, the relic of a powerful king and Otherworld hero.
It all reminds me of the Celtic Exhibition we saw in Stuttgart in 2014, when for the first time I saw the Gundestrup Cauldron and its fabulous motifs. The cauldron in magic myth gave a never ending supply of food and gives material credence to all those stories from long ago.

to be continued

https://northstoke.blogspot.com/2008/04/shrines-and-rivers-continued.html

https://northstoke.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-village-of-north-stoke.html

Tuesday 28th April

"Be like water, taught Lao-tzu, philosopher and founder of Taosim, soft and limpid, it finds its way through, over or under any obstacle. It does not quarrel; it simply moves on.

Ruskin Bond

My computer went slow yesterday and behaved in a most odd manner but is working alright this morning so it must have been my server. Perhaps I am going a bit mad in my solitary state cooped up with a slightly mad dog ;)

Weird dreams last night, a little girl walked up to the bed, blame 'Devs' for that, then ex-husband walked through the wall and I then woke on the vision of seeing a live rat near the fireplace in the sitting room. Thank goodness it was only a dream. What else has happened, the light in Paul's study has come on a couple of times without anyone being in there and so has the heater in the en-suite bathroom, somewhere I hardly visit except to flush the loo, which has always had a bit of a problem with sticking.

Here I reside in a largish cottage, all by myself, except for animals, with a feeling of guilt at the space I occupy and a need to move on, and in the outside world a certain chaos reigns. Except there is no chaos only marvellous people coping with a pandemic, thank god for kindness.

There is a very large drive of pebbles with a turning space attached to this cottage, and of course weeds start to appear in the gravel and the little winged seeds of the sycamore spread their bounty. Think in 50 years, the drive would develop into a woodland. So I decided to spray a weed killer on the worst, though I have been weeding them by hand. Full bottle with spray in the garage, how do I use it? Yes not only am I socially inadequate but I can't work out how it works. Eventually succeed, then with hens and dog underfoot I try to spray, get rid of animals and then cover the grass I have sprayed with plastic to protect the hens.

The spurge (Euphorbia) plants fill a hole

Good things happen of course, my son has sent a second batch of chocolate (to make me fat?) my daughter has sent me 'spacemasks' for headaches. And my two magazines, Permaculture and Resurgence have dropped through the letterbox, so plenty to read.

whoops a dandelion and the hen has raked over a seedling plot

Took Lucy down Salton Lane yesterday and picked one bluebell from three different spots in the village, including my garden. You can tell the difference between the Spanish hybridised bluebell and the native one, not only by the colour but by the lipped appearance of the bell flower, they all seem native round here thank goodness.

Bad behaviour? People are starting to break out of 'lockdown' here in North Yorkshire, Malham Cove being the case in question. It is in the Yorkshire Dales and looks lovely. I can understand the frustration but not the abuse and bullying of the police, though of course the police use force as well.

Pottering

      

  And azuring-over greybell makes

Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes

Gerald Manley Hopkins

It is that time of year, I cannot go to a wood covered in bluebells for two reasons, one because my heart would break without Paul, the other of course is leaving home in this time of stay-at-home.  Somewhere years ago I wrote about the bluebell, nonscriptus, but it has vanished, and each year I fall once more in love with this magical moment of extreme blueness......

But there are a trace of bluebells in the garden, they raise their stubborn heads in the lawn and over the road in the verge there is a strong clump of their dark blue flowers, telling of long ago when once this area was woodland.  The above come from Blake's Wood, Essex.
Well somewhere I had written about them but can't find the blog.  Grigson gives the Latin name Endymion nonscriptus which has fallen out of fashion now and there is a new name.
And to quote Hopkins once more "In falls of sky- colour washing the brows and slacks of the ground with vein blue".  They are often seen as blue harebells in the middle ages. And even Shakespeare mentions them.  It is difficult to describe the effect this flower has on the psyche of the British people, it is the massed blue ranks of their sweet smelling flowers  amongst the shaded area of the woods they grow in.  Then they are gone and summer is on its way.

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I came across this old blog as well with Yeat's poem in it, it captures the history we walk over every time we walk anywhere.

The dews drop slowly and dreams gather; unknown spears

Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes,

And then the crash of fallen horsemen and the cries

Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.

We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore,

The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew.

Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you,

Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.

Taken from from The Valley of the Black Pig by Yeats.

The weather was grey and misty, but everywhere had the vivid colour of spring, a green depth that only a rain-soaked land like ours is capable of producing. As I hunted for the plants, Moss also found his great treasures, they comprised of the scents of pheasants and grouse, (which he missed) fox and a badger sett; as he stood triumphantly at the entrance to this last find, sadly I forgot to photograph him. The sett is in a little copse just by the old Langridge barrows, several entrances going deep underground into the copse. It was here in this field with the ladies smock and a bank of cowslips, that the wild orchids will appear later on. 

The poem and the walk of course are threaded together, sometimes the 'presence' of words, ideas, nature and history long gone, are so evocative as to imprint the very air with their images. It is at these moments that such ideas as 'anima mundi' come into being, the holistic nature of the world around us. The dawn chorus is at its most vibrant, the colour of the leaves are fresh and new, there is a benign warmth in the air, a 'spirit of life' walks this particular patch of earth, the ghosts of the past are perhaps called forth - yet they are invisible. Yeats measured the futility of battle, against the long dead occupants of the cairn; the small people toiling in the field as people died for a greater glory, which of course is no glory.

Not taking life seriously at the moment.

Tom Degan definitely isn't!

The thought-architecture of conservatism has been so clearly broken by the pandemic that the buzzword in elite circles is now “post-ideology”. We’re spending an extra £350bn, cancelling the entire deficit reduction efforts of the past ten years because we have to. We’re paying 80 per cent of people’s wages because the alternative is the collapse capitalism. We’re imposing draconian restrictions on individual liberty because the scientists say we have to – though it riles every Burkean bone in our bodies.

I have a dream and no it is not clearing my system with disinfectant, Dettol have already issued a warning against ingesting such a dangerous substance. When for goodness sake are they going to take him to the 'funny house'? No all of a sudden we will understand where we have been going with an out of date government system, and I include the Labour party in that analysis.

The sun shines as if it knows it is time to rejoice with planes out of the sky, cars off the road, the world looks greener, the animals roam at will, the bird song is clear, and we look into everyone's house and criticise their decor as they stare wooden faced into their computers.

Have we lost the plot, are we undone by a virus?  Notice how all over the world minds are being put to the cure, the problem at the moment when should we let the people out?  I am glad Johnson survived, I do not wish death on anyone, but missing 5 Cobra meetings, leader he isn't.

"The Tories went into this crisis nurturing the belief that the state should have no motivating purpose, that complex market relationships make public services more efficient, and that public spending is a bad idea. At time of writing, the result is that England and Wales’s weekly death toll is 75 per cent higher than normal."


"But here’s the problem. Conservatism gained its modern character through first creating by force, and then having to maintain by force, the neoliberal system. It’s twin leitmotifs are celebration of the rich and justification of inequality, not celebration of the immigrant social care worker and state seizure of the private healthcare system."

All quotes from the News Statesman

On the Home Front; That expletive deleted cockerel has ravaged my little bantam, the other one has gone all broody but she could have been ravished as well.  Though they are laying eggs as if their is no tomorrow. My family are sending me parcels and no one has actually gone mad yet, except for one clear case, I cannot understand how the Republican party keeps him in power.

Thursday

Well I started writing this morning then lost it all for some reason.  Then, joy of joys, found my password for the News Statesman worked and so I went and read some articles.  They did not lighten my heart towards the government but that is another story.

Went shopping, everyone was polite and smiling, we observed our two metre lengths, especially over the narrow bridge, and i got all the animals food, even Lucy's rather expensive taste in Harrington's food.  But quite a few of the shelves were empty. Snoring gently on the chair yesterday.

Looking back.  This was a trip to London with family, traipsing round for miles with Lillie doing the famous 'L' loser, to everyone.  We are an untidy family, compared to the immaculate Horse Guard!  Which reminds me of many years ago when i had a friend who went out with one of these chaps.  She married an art conservator in the end, and went and lived in a folly mill with her beloved who restored Gainsboroughs' as I remember.  But her flat always had large paintings hanging around on the floor and I was always scared about falling into one.

They all did dry off in the end.

Tuesday 21st April

Fidelia Bridge - Amercian painter 1834 to.....

Funny story on living in the country.  Friend got an email from a couple who had moved into the village a year ago.  Who owns the pheasants in their garden they asked?  Obviously they did not like the intrusion, makes you think.

Yesterday my green grocery stuff came from Daisys.  I had also ordered four herb plants for £10, Rosemary, Sage, Marjoram and Thyme, all good sized plants.

It reminded me of all the books that I had read on the usefulness of herbs, their various healing qualities. How the lungwort growing in the garden at the moment, is really named after the fact that its mottled leaves look like lungs, so therefore in the middle ages was seen as a cure.  You can eat the new hawthorn tips, the wild garlic leaves, nettle and ground elder leaves for soup or greens.

I like the sweetness of marjoram, and its flowers makes the bees happy.  Rosemary with fried potatoes, sage leaves added with lemon to chicken, and thyme for omelettes.  Their culinary aspects adds a lot to meal times.  I already had all these plants but I am just happy to have them around, chives are already starting to flower and hopefully my parsley seeds will also take root.  One thing I do not have is a bay tree, for that brown dried leaf which always was added to the little herb bunch, neatly tied in muslin and dropped in casseroles.

My cut and come again lettuce sprouts in the cold frame, beans, both runner and french reach for the sky, and the little plants of tomatoes and courgettes bought last week are dying to get out of their pots and grow. 

Satellites are massing in space much to the disgruntlement of astronomers, oil is piling up because we are not using our cars or planes, can you not remember the time when there was dire predictions of oil running out.  The air is fresher because of less pollution, people are beginning to fret against the harness of 'stay at home'.  Things are turned on their heads - Welcome Alice!

Nostalgia

The day is once more glorious but where is the rain? Sunday a day of rest, will all days be like this in the future?  On Sundays Paul would occasionally cook a full on breakfast.  He was incredibly slow and I would have to have some toast earlier on to keep  hunger pangs at bay.  Timed for 10.0.clock coffee time.  You can see how I miss this time, happiness built in a  moment.  Also at this time of year was the welcoming of the cherry blossom on the two trees.  Tiny cups would be found from the back of the cupboard, and the Saki wine heated and put in a jug and then we would drink it in the garden, toasting the blossom, the weather as warm as it is today.

Of course they were not the fruit cherries but the over exuberant pink flowering Japanese cherries, and I with my utilitarian background would wish for the cherries later on in the year.

A friend from Hawaii said he would like to come back this summer and bring some Saki wine to drink at a memorial do, but it hardly seems that such a gathering of people will happen in the present climate.

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Books; Once again untidiness!  I took photos of my books yesterday, and today I picked up Wendell Berry to read.  I like his writing, and those large horses he used to farm with. He is now old and seen as a poet and prophet, 'The Peace of Wild Things' you will hear in the video below. As a poem it seems apt for today's troubles but contains in its message that beautiful gleam of hope as we wander amongst our wonderful wild world - never give up ;)

My animal companions ;)

Disruptive cocker spaniel called Lucy.  Is she trying to read the book?  Normally she tears up books, cross that I am upstairs on the computer so she punishes me, either tearing up books or tangling my knitting wool!  Yesterday it was  'Middlemarch's cover.  Which they have been reading on the radio, and had come to an end yesterday, with Maggie and Tom drowning together.

Green Eyes is so cute, she is settling herself into the garden, wandering round after the bantams, I should really get in touch with the Cat Protection charity to get something to catch her in, so that she can go to the vets, but then are the vets working?

Several cockerels and a couple of hens in the copse, they belong to Nelson and are ranging far and wide for food, praying though they don't make it into my garden. What is he going to do with all those cockerels? eat them?........

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As everyone knows we have a 5-0-clock  news showdown on the state of the virus information each day.  Three people stand at their podiums and analysis state of play.  One has been our chief medical officer Chris Witty, gravely serious but an expert, so it was nice to read something good about him, and I quote someone else's response on F/B.  It was taken from a site called 'Overheard in Waitrose', (a lovely ironic jab at a posh supermarket). The government man in the middle, whoever he may be, Johnson or Hancock, must bow to the superior knowledge of the scientific people who stand alongside them. 
There is a growing mood by the way against the fact that a 99 year old man who walked back and forth in a very brave and gallant manner and raised millions of pound for charitable purposes for the NHS.  That in fact it is the role of our government to fund the NHS properly through the taxes we pay and not charity. Don't let me embark on the billion pounds HS2 will cost....

"So I thought it'd be nice to balance things out with a few kinder words and some facts about our extraordinary Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty.
He is a Physician and Epidemiologist who has dedicated his life to medical practice, research and teaching and he is considered to be one of the leading world experts on infectious diseases.
He only took on the chief CMO role in October 2019, and until the coronavirus threat emerged, he had never done broadcast interviews or held press briefings or conferences.
He has worked in various countries throughout Europe, Asia and Africa and played a leading role in the effort on the Ebola outbreak in 2014, when he held the post of chief scientific adviser at the Department for International Development.
Colleagues have described him as "Made for the role of CMO" and "an absolutely extraordinary, brilliant man" and "Exactly the man we need.”
We should all be glad to have someone like this helping the country through a health crisis right now. It doesn't matter what he looks like. Words by Stephanie Wood ."

Friday's pick

Cats and Auden have a symbiosis of course, his 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats' is power to that.  So mother cat carrying her young makes me smile, Auden on the other hand was very intellectual in his poetic writing, not a good marriage but he loved cats.  Myself, I have sowed seeds, tutted over my runner and french bean plants which are growing out of the cold frame and need to be moved on.  Will there be frost in the future?

"Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast"

.W.H. Auden

The Fall of Rome  The rest of the poem

Thursday

The wild cherry trees on the verge

my white and green tulips ready to open

the cows going back to the barn

found stitchwort in the verges

Nelson's geese

The strange alien plant called the butterbur.  I meant to catch the butterfly on the butterbur but of course could not.

Glorious sun, lit up the world yesterday as we went for a walk. So quiet hardly any traffic on the road and the intimacy of a small village on show.  Nelson's geese who have been making a lot of noise recently snowy white against the green of the grass

The recycling van has just picked up my stuff and driven off with a friendly toot of horn.  The one thing I decided to recycle today was a box full of lager cans, Paul had bought it last year, and it has stayed in the cupboard all that time.  Then yesterday as I looked at my meagre load of  cardboard recyclable goods I decided that this too must go, so I left a little message on the box with funny faces.  Already the tears start at what I have done.

As I walked and looked at the emerging dandelions scattered around I could not see any bees but then walking under the clouds of white blossom the familiar humming of bees at work, they were up amongst the starry white flowers.  Soon there will be the small, hard and bitter red cherries which the birds adore, and the trees will be stripped in a matter of days.  

I chased a butterfly to catch it on the butterbur plant, there were several types out brimstone, orange tip and a couple of brown, the ones I always call 'pedestrian crossing butterflies'.  No luck my camera is always too late in responding but as the wild flowers emerge so do the butterflies.

Which brings me to what I was going to write about.  Which two books would you take to your 'Desert Island'?  Yes I am really chucking out the bible, I will spare you the swear words;) and taking Dorothy Hartley's Food in England and Geoffrey Grigson's The Englishman's Flora, for these are my bibles and to which I return always, for those small fascinating unimportant fact/facts that litter our literature.  My eight discs is a tad more difficult, (for American visitors this is a programme which interviews many different people over their music and book choice). And has been going since 1942.

Dorothy Hartley seems a fascinating person to research, born in Wales, she was a journalist and her book was published in the 1950s.  The blurb says that she went round the country interviewing the last of the country people who still had traces of Tudor times in their cooking habits, and the book itself is indeed a historical cornucopia of wonderful facts.

 

And the one thing I had forgotten to record for yesterday, was the enormous box of chocolates, courtesy of Amazon which sat on the doorstep, no name as to who had sent it.  Phoned my daughter, nope she said, and when I eventually got through to my son, it turned out to be him.  First time he has done that! bless him.

Good things and bad things.

My dear friend J phoned up yesterday evening, we both have problems with our phones but it was lovely to hear her chatter.  She has had the same problem with Daisy's garden centre bringing the wrong stuff, instead of one pot of a dozen sweet peas, they delivered 12 pots.  Also had one of those Jacquie Lawson cards from a friend in America, she lived in Lampeter, and when we were young we went out dancing in Aberayron, and then she moved to America with her husband and only occasionally came back to England.

In the background the radio only has one subject, criticising the leader of America at the moment, but the subject of this virus dominates the airwaves all the time.

Quibbling now, there is not enough testing but that of course means because the testing gear needs to be structured to meet the demand.  But one thing must never be forgotten and that is a lack of humanity.  For all those who say a 'few thousand old people death's will not be important' that sort of thinking is the downward  slippery slope of morality.  Care homes have been neglected, perhaps because because they were not thought of as important, but their workers are also front line workers and need testing quickly.

Next of course is the 'economy' it will bring devastating effects world wide and also in this country.  But remember this (tongue in cheek) the Conservatives are fighting for their own survival, so in a way they are fighting for ours!

But a moral question: If large quantities of vaccinations come on the market, where should they go?  For instance morally it would be kinder to see they go to places like Africa and India because of their much larger populations, not diverting them like a president, who thinks nothing of taking other people's stuff to further his own career.

 Back to 'fluffy' things  Here the sun shines, as life springs with a strong force, nature is oblivious to suffering of course.  My small kitten is settling down to the garden, follows the bantams around and plays with them.  She even snoozed on the step of the french doors in the sun, think she needs a flea treatment though.  My friend in Cornwall wrote yesterday, he raises working collies and has a new pup in training, and I can just see him with his few sheep in the large field he owns with Spottie on a lead.

The calm aspect of an Eric Ravilous painting...............The sweeping curves of the downs, very female you can almost see why in prehistory the Mother goddess was worshipped.

Easter Monday

Well I went off and found this little snippet of a video.  The little ones's Scottish accent is so cute, not a word I use often, but still.  I definitely wasn't as articulate as that at her age, and probably never questioned Jesus's relationship with Easter eggs. But enjoy.

 

Simon Thompson on his blog  mentioned stitchwort on their blog, a plant I look out for every year, and because I am being lazy about blog writing, collected my old blogs links......

https://northstoke.blogspot.com/2010/05/bluebells.html

https://northstoke.blogspot.com/2016/05/thursday-12th-may.html


https://northstoke.blogspot.com/2009/12/idle-flowers-by-robert-bridges.html

https://northstoke.blogspot.com/2007/05/silbury-hill-seeds.html

Happy Easter everyone - let there be a good harvest this year

      

Apples and pears for a good harvest.  I remember planting Orleans Reinette with the Reverend Wilkes nearby.  Sex starts with Spring!

A rose with words that I can't read!

Each photo will tell its own story, the one above I sent to my daughter this morning, did not work properly but we spent a good half an hour on the phone chattering, three of the above are practically grown-up now.

Heroes

This assistant head teacher is delivering food to some of his pupils, weep for such selfless acts.

https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/grimsby-news/hero-teacher-walking-over-fives-3988622

Good Friday again

Beautiful videos from Liziqi, she must be the most hardworking person on this earth.  Everything is handmade and if you explore her videos you will see food prepared with great skill and artistry.  It seems an idyllic life but lots of hard work, and one thing you will gather from this is the limited amount of materials that the Chinese (amended) had in past history to work with.  Indigo dyeing is probably one of the most difficult things to do, the 'resist' method of translating a pattern laborious, you will see the process in the video before this, but the above video shows the material she has made.

Went shopping yesterday, mostly for the animals, stood our two metres distance over the bridge to the Co-op, and only a few were let in at a time to the supermarket.  There were empty shelves and less green grocery, but still plenty to buy.

It was the curlew yesterday, the tale of the cuckoo will be the next.  Each year I find the old blogs and reread that which I wrote several years ago.

Not forgetting hares at Easter

Sitting Hare - by Charles Tunnicliffe (1901 - 1979)

But the c    

The story of Saint Melangell and her little hare

 Story of Saint Melangell and her little hare. She was the daughter of King Cufwlch and Ethni of Ireland and she fled to Wales to escape a forced marriage. She settled in Pennant at the head of a valley, and whilst one day sitting in a clearing she heard the sound of a hunt, dogs and horses galloping up the valley. This was Prince Brochwael of Powys hunting hares. As she sat a hare came into the clearing and Melangell hid it in the sleeve of her dress to protect it. When it peeped out the dogs fled, and so the Prince gave her the land on which he hunted, and she lived at Pennant for another 37 years and no animal was killed in her sanctuary. Hares were known as wyn bach Melangell or Melangell's little lambs, and to kill a hare was an act of sacrilege.

This story is taken from "The Book of Welsh Saints" T.D. Breverton, and there are other versions of the tale. But at Llanfihangel-y-Pennant near Llangynog is probably the site of her foundation, because on the church's medieval rood-screen are little hares.

1795 drawing 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melangell

Of course it must not be forgotten that the term Easter comes from the Anglo-Saxon Goddess Eostre as Bede states here;

The English Months. In olden time the English people – for it did not seem fitting to me that I should speak of other nations' observance of the year and yet be silent about my own nation's – calculated their months according to the course of the moon. Hence after the manner of the Hebrews and the Greeks, [the months] take their name from the moon, for the moon is called mona and the month monath. The first month, which the Latins call January, is Giuli; February is called Sol-monath; March Hreth-monath; April, Eostur-monath; May Thrimilchi... Eostur-monath has a name which is now translated Paschal month, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. (Eostur-monath, qui nunc paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a dea illorum quae Eostre vocabatur et cui in illo festa celebrabant nomen habuit.) Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.

Resting Hare by Andrew Hartington




Paintings courtesy of Brigit Strawbridge Howard