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Morwenna_W

<t>And yet how telling, that they reached for a god, and then a devil, rather than for men with spades. The people who named it knew, in the way the old knowing goes, that it marked a boundary that mattered, a line between one thing and another, and a line like that asks more than a labour gang to a...

Morwenna_W

<t>Nobody here is defending the litter louts, Mech, we mind them more than you do, it is our sacred ground they are fouling. But mind what you wish for with ticketing and fences. Lock the stones up on the one morning they were raised for and you do not stop the slobs, you only shut out the families ...

Morwenna_W

It is a true old form, Sam. Those of us who keep the ways still send things into the stones, gentler words now but the same bones underneath. Your nan is carrying something far older than she knows. Treasure it, and her.

Morwenna_W

It was lovely this year, Bran, I stood near you I think. Whatever folk make of the robes, there is a plain truth in marking the turn of the year in the very place built to mark it. We have done it on that ground for five thousand years. We are only the latest to stand there.

Morwenna_W

<t>And note that it rides on the wild nights of the turning year, around the solstice and the twelve days, when the boundary is thin and the dead and the other folk are abroad. Every culture that has the Hunt puts it at the same season. They were not comparing notes. They were all standing under the...

Morwenna_W

<t>And the lost-time is the heart of it, which is a lovely and frightening thing to give a child gently. You go in for what feels like one dance, and you come out and everyone you knew is old or gone. Time runs differently on the other side of the ring. Tell her the fairies are real enough that we a...

Morwenna_W

<t>Just so, Annie. And I would add only this: the hare-witch is always crossing, isnt she. Out of the body and into the field, out of the woman and into the animal, between the hearth and the dark. The hare is the creature of the boundary, the one that slips across. That is why she is the witch's sh...

Morwenna_W

<t>The hare comes up so often in our folklore that I wanted to gather what people know. The old belief, all over these islands, is that a witch could take the shape of a hare, and that the way you knew was if you shot or coursed a hare and later found a woman of the village nursing a wound in the sa...

Morwenna_W

<t>The cider and the noise are the wassail, Bill, that is not a corruption, that is the thing itself. Joy and a loud noise and a gift to the tree. Your grandfather knew exactly what he was doing. We have made these things solemn in our heads, but they were always a party with a purpose. Long may you...

Morwenna_W

<t>A happy new year to the forum. We wassailed the orchard at Twelfth Night as we do every year, and it set me wondering who else still keeps the old customs round here, and which have died out. For those who do not know it: wassailing is waking the apple trees, singing to them, pouring last year's ...

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Hares, witches and shape-shifting

Wassailing and the old customs - who still does them?