Fastern's Eve

While this is a week overdue (and then some) you can still feel free to commiserate and feel sorry for me, dear reader, for I'm about to reminisce in a misty-eyed fashion about my horribly deprived childhood. Yes. Poor me.

It was horribly deprived, you see, because we were only allowed pancakes once a year. This, I think you'll agree, was a terrible travesty - for what else embodies all that is good and yummy in the world than the humble and versatile pancake?

Certainly The Church agrees with me, apparently.

Yes, as a kid there was just one day in the year when my family would have pancakes (and when I say pancakes I'm talking about the thin crepe-like pancakes that are common here, not the kind of pancakes we would call "American pancakes," or other nummy versions like drop scones or pikelets), and that was on Shrove Tuesday - the day before Lent starts on Ash Wednesday.

So as a kid, Shrove Tuesday was a Big Deal. I wasn't raised religiously so the pancakes were very much part of a very secular tradition and Lent never meant all that much to me beyond having a vague idea that the Easter Bunny was on the horizon. And something to do with palm trees at some point? But sod the chocolate: Shrove Tuesday heralded a day of deliciousness served with lemon, sugar and butter, and dad trying to flip a pancake onto the ceiling so it would stick.

As an adult I now have the luxury of making pancakes whenever I like (so there, mother *blows raspberry*). And while I'm still not Christian and nor is my husband, there was a unanimous demand for pancakes in the Seren household last Tuesday because It's Traditional, Damnit. Who am I to deprive my loved ones of tasty goodness? Or deny time-honoured traditions their rightful place?

So pancakes there were.

It's a tradition that might seem a bit odd - whether it's observed as part of a religious context, or a secular one like I've always experienced it. But when you look into its origins it does kind of make sense even though my experience of them has been fuck it, PANCAKES.

It came up on the Gaelic Polytheism group a while back, so I figured that even though it's not particularly relevant to the average polytheist, it's still worth looking at from a cultural perspective. And any excuse for me to waffle on about something, right?

So in the traditional sense it all comes from the idea of penitence. "Shrove" is the past tense for shrive - striving for absolution and repentance - so in that sense the day heralds the start of the Lenten period which focuses on that kind of thing as Easter approaches. Along with penitence, lots of Christians these days tend to give something up for Lent - a vice or luxury, something that represents self-sacrifice. This comes from the traditional fasting that most Christians would have observed from around the Middle Ages onwards - eschewing the enjoyment of rich foods like meat, dairy, and anything sweet. So pancakes - being delicious and made of just the kinds of things that wouldn't be allowed during Lent - were just the thing for Shrove Tuesday, allowing one last chance to enjoy rich foods, as well as providing the opportunity to use up the ingredients.

In parts of Scotland, because Scotland always has to be different, Shrove Tuesday was traditionally better known as Fastern's Eve (or "Fastren's" Eve) - "Fastern" meaning "Fasting." Here the pancakes would be drop scones or sauty bannocks - drop scones made with a little oatmeal and salt added. When the pancakes were to be made the family would gather round the hearth, and one person would make the batter, one person would pour it out onto the girdle, and another person would turn the pancake to cook the other side, and then whoever the pancake was for would get to enjoy it however they liked - with a bit of butter and jam, perhaps.

The last pancake was special, and might be used for divination games. The Easter period was traditionally the time for marriages, so those who were coming up to the age when thoughts were turning to settling down might make a special bannock to take to bed with them - the "dreaming bannock," or "sauty bannock." The bannock would have a little oatmeal added to thicken it, a lot of salt, and sometimes even soot to discolour it, like these (minus the soot):

OMNOMNOMNOM

It was supposed to be made in absolute silence, and then a little bit was eaten before the rest was placed under the pillow. No drink should be taken (the ensuing thirst during sleep presumably inducing the sort of uncomfortable sleep that would make vivid dreams more likely), and the person was supposed to dream of their future spouse.

In a group, a similar kind of pancake might be made - again thickened with oatmeal and well-salted - with charms added to it. Whoever was in charge of baking the pancake had to do it in absolute silence, and everyone else present would make a great game of trying to make the baker break their silence. If they did, someone else would take over the baking, and so on. The pancake would then be broken into pieces and placed in the pocket of the gudewife's apron. She was then blindfolded and would pick out a piece of the pancake and would cry out, ‘Wha owns this?’ until someone claimed it. The charm contained in the piece was supposed to indicate the kind of person the recipient would end up marrying - a bawbee (a halfpenny) indicated a bachelor; a farthing, a widower; a button, a tailor; a piece of straw, a farmer; a piece of cloth, a clothier; a nail, a blacksmith. Apparently this is still a thing in parts of Newfoundland but I've never heard of anyone doing it round here. The kids are a little young to be particularly fussed about who they might, if at all, so I've not done it, but it's all very reminiscent of the Samhainn crowdie.

So...that's Fastern's Eve in a nutshell.

Là Fhèill Brìghde

Since my last post I've been wallowing in the delights of a triple-whammy of never-ending Viral Lurgy Of Dooooom (ohhhh the delights of having school-age children), so while Là Fhèill Brìghde has been celebrated right on time here, I'm only just about mustering the presence of mind to write anything up about it. I hope you're all considerably less germy than things are 'round here.

Seeing as the kids were thoroughly under the weather over the course of our celebrations, they weren't too keen on getting too involved in much of anything so it was mostly just me left to my own devices this time around. I generall aim to try and encourage their interest rather than insist on their involvement, and for the most part Rosie is far keener than Tom is (if Gaelic Polytheism involved robots he'd be sold, but as it is...not so much...). So I ended up making a dealbh Brìde by myself one evening. I'm running low on supplies and didn't want to have to use any glue so it's a little bespoke, but it does the job:

Last year we used an icon that Rosie had made and she insisted on making underwear for Brìde (or "the lady who comes with the cow," as Rosie refers to her). I must confess that this year I didn't. Scandalous.

So anyway. The day before our celebrations had been spent cleaning and tidying, while on the Thursday itself I went into Glasgow to join my mother-in-law at a seminar that was part of the Celtic Connections festival. It was a talk on the state of archaeology in the Orkneys and I thoroughly enjoyed it - part of it was a wee slideshow accompanied by some traditional music, so I got to see lots of sites from around Orkney. Sadly, the point of the seminar was that most of them are under threat from coastal erosion so there were a fair few before/after shots (now you see the Pictish house! Now you don't...). My mother-in-law will be going on holiday to Orkney this summer and I'm thoroughly envious.

I got back home in time to start the dinner and decided to make a Shetland brönie for pudding (dessert); it's a kind of gingerbreadish bannockish...thing...made with buttermilk, so it seemed apt. It was very nice, but would've been nicer with a bit of rhubarb and ginger jam, I think. I set some aside for Brìde, anyway.

Tom was feeling rotten and was good for not much more than lying on the sofa groaning occasionally before sloping off to bed, poor thing, but Rosie was well enough to want to know what was going on and why she couldn't play with the new icon I'd made. She remembered from last year that Brìde would be coming to visit and wanted to take it to bed with her, so I decided to relent a little and got one of the old icons I made a few years ago out - a soft one made from a sew-it-yourself kit - and gave it to Rosie so she could take it to bed. At bedtime I told her to look after it and make a nice wee space for it in her bed, and maybe if she told Brìde she was welcome to come and visit, she might. I told her the words to say and Rosie repeated them back as she fussed about the icon to make her nice and comfy. I invited Tom to join in and he mumbled along from the top bunk of the bed with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

Along with the old icon I'd dug out for Rosie I'd found some red raffia that wasn't doing much so I decided to make a cros Bríde with it, wrapped around some twigs of rowan. I placed it on my shrine and the next day when Rosie saw it she wanted to make one so I dug out some lollipop sticks and wool so we could make one together (just like I used to make as a kid - except I think we made them around Lent, for some reason, and nobody ever told us what they were for). She found it a bit tricky to do  it all by herself so we did it together, and ended up with this:

Which is now hanging over her bed. As we made the cros I asked her if Brìde had visited her in the night and she said yes she had. Rosie told me that Brìde had sat with her for a while and had told her not to worry about her school work - even though it's hard sometimes, it's how we learn, and even if we get things wrong, then it helps us figure out how to do things right.

But back to my evening...

The night was extremely windy and the rain was being thrown down in clumps and spurts. After putting the kids to bed I got to doing my own thing, put the icon in her bed with her wand and opened the door to invite Brìde in. I spoke softly into the storm and stood for a little while on the threshold before closing the door. I sang, made offerings, sained the house (not necessarily all in that order...), and left out some food for Brìde for the night; I meant to put some clothes out for blessing but somehow forgot (I was going to put something out for my niece, too, who's pregnant, so I kicked myself for that).

It was a quiet ritual (admittedly punctuated by the back door being dramatically pulled open by the cat just after I'd invited Brìde in, who then announced himself loudly, and then blown open again by the wind), and one I've done so many times now that it felt comfortable and comforting. Some people like to do something different for every festival - and yeah, sometimes change is good. But after nearly ten years of finding my way I'm starting to feel like I'm really treading in some familiar footsteps for each festival, each day.

Book Review: The Otherworld

Following on from my post a few weeks ago, here's my review of The Otherworld. To summarise: Yay. Now can we have a Scottish one of these, please?

The Otherworld: Music and Song from Irish Tradition
Ríonach ui Ógáin and Tom Sherlock (Eds.)

This is a compilation of forty songs, lilts, tales, and instrumental pieces from the Irish Folklore Collection, spanning from the early 1920s up until 2010, presented on two CDs with an accompanying book. It's all beautifully done, it has to be said - not just in how the book looks, but in the over all quality of writing and the tracks that have been selected as well, and I think there's just the right amount of discussion and detail given for each track. It doesn't assume the audience has in-depth knowledge of the subject, but it doesn't over-simplify, either, and it's not one of those dry, dense, academic volumes that so many have come to dread. It gives enough to cover the basics and give a solid footing, and provides a bibliography for further reading for those who might want to explore further.

As far as the book itself goes, we start with a good introduction to the project and its development, and some background about the Otherworld in Irish folk belief, before going on to deal with the CDs themselves. Each track has its own chapter, with a transcription of any spoken word or lyrics given clearly in bold at the start, followed by further details and explanation of the major themes and plot points found. While most of the tracks are in English, or without lyrics at all, some of the tracks are recorded in Irish. Any Irish is always provided with an English translation straight after it, with exactly the same formatting, so it's easy to compare, and easy to figure out what's being said if you don't happen to have any Irish while you're listening to a song or whatever.

There's a good variety of themes covered - the good people, of course, but also songs, jigs and tales relating to mermaids, the púca, banshees and revenants (the dead returned), as well as tragic tales of loves lost to witchcraft or being taken into the hills, and so on. Incidental bits of folklore about the festival calendar, lone bushes and trees, building new houses and going out at night (safely) are weaved into the chapters here and there, as they come up and while there isn't much to learn if you've already read a fair few books about this kind of thing, there are surely some bits and pieces that will be new, and there are the songs themselves. I was particularly interested in the chapter discussing the song about the púca, seeing as there's not usually much said about it beyond its reputation for pissing on brambles at Samhain...

There are contributors from almost every part of Ireland (only three counties aren't included here, though I didn't see anything that said why this was the case), from people living in the city or the countryside, and from all walks of life - farmers, housewives, musicians, and Travellers. Some information about where and when the track was recorded, who is speaking and who is recording, who wrote or composed the piece (if known), or if there are any similar songs or stories in other countries, is also discussed. Photographs of the people and places involved are given, too, with examples of things like fairy bushes, May bushes, boys dressed in girl's clothing to protect them from the good people, and more are given. The only downside to this is that some of the photographs are a little too dark to make out any real detail - I'm fairly sure that's mostly because they're much older than the ones that are a bit clearer, but I think it would have been good to try and clean some of the worst examples up a little (I assume time and/or budget constraints prevented this). But on the plus side, with the occasional bit of squinting at the pictures, this all helps to provide a good bit of context to each track you hear.

While the subject matter is very much Otherworldly and many of the songs are kind of hypnotic to listen to, the book helps to anchor it all in a more tangible reality - something that some books on the same kind of subject tend to lack. A lot of the time, when you read a book about the songs or tunes of Ireland and so on, you just see the songs - the lyrics, the music laid out for you to practice - and it's very plain, just words on paper, really. Here you get to see the people the voices or instruments belong to, bringing a more tangible feel to a body of tradition that's often divorced from its context.

With brief biographies of the folklorists who went out collecting the material included as well, the book is almost as much about the processing of collecting and recording as much as the traditions that have been preserved on tape as well. Anyone who's done a bit of reading on the subject will recognise a few names mentioned - Caomhín Ó Danachair (Kevin Danaher), in particular - and it's good to put some faces to the names. This might not be as interesting to most people unless you're especially keen on everything folklore, but I think it's an important addition to the book, for their contribution to preserving tradition as much as the tradition bearers themselves, in some ways.

I'm not especially musical myself but the recordings are clear and the songs that have been chosen are beautifully sung. The incidental background noises on some of the recordings - a dog yapping, people talking - also adds to the atmosphere. In most cases the songs are simply sung, perhaps accompanied by a fiddle, maybe even a piano. There are a couple of pieces on the uilleann pipes and flute as well, and the simplicity of the recordings let the arrangements speak for themselves. There really isn't anything in the book that you could call unnecessary padding - the chapters are very concise and repetition is kept at a minimum so all in all it makes for a good introduction to the subject.

Aside from my gripe about some of the photos being too dark, my only other real quibble is that the CDs are situated right at the back of the book, stuck on two rubbery, nobbly bits attached to the back cover (marvel at my technical description!). It's a bit fiddly to put the CDs back on securely, but it's hardly the end of the world.

All in all, this is a good, solid book and it's a very welcome addition to the bookshelf. Considering the low price, what you get is very good mileage for your money, too.

JSTOR

One of the biggest problems for most people who are keen on doing their own research is the limited access to academic journals. The kind of articles you can find in journals are often some of the most useful resources because they can deal with the kind of minutiae and specialist areas that won't fit into a book, or else they provide the kind of bite-size burst of information that's a lot easier to chew on than a dry and dense academic book. But unless you have access to a university library, or academic resources like JSTOR, you pretty much have to rely on what's freely available online (such as ones I've listed here), or hope you can find someone who might trouble themselves to obtain a copy for you.

For a while now, JSTOR have been offering access to some of their articles that are already in the public domain, but now – and finally, because they've been promising to do it for ages – they're allowing members of the public limited access to their still-copyrighted catalogue. From what I've read, you won't get access to all the brand new articles that have just been released, but if what you're looking for has been published for a good three years or so, then you might be able to access it (if it's included in the scheme). You have to sign up to the site, and then you'll be able to add no more than three articles to your "shelf," where you can then view them. You don't get to download the articles, you just get access to images (so you can't cut and paste them to keep forever and ever), and whatever you add will stay on your shelf for two weeks, after which you can remove it and then pick something else to read.

So it really is limited – and frustratingly so if you're relying on it to do research for a particular piece you might want to work on – but it's better than nothing I suppose. For me, while I have access to a university library and can get a lot of articles there, I don't get access to JSTOR or other kinds of online resources, so it's a bugger if I want to access an article in a journal the university doesn't carry. Now, though, I can access journals like Béaloideas, whereas otherwise I'd have to jump through hoops to get what I want to look at when I happen to be able to visit the library. So that's a definite YAY.

I'm still holding out for unlimited access, though...

More new stuff

Good news, everyone! Kathryn and Treasa have published a new article over on Gaol Naofa that I want to point to, because it's well worth a read:

Breath of Life: The Triple Flame of Brigid

The link above gives you some background to the piece and links to a pdf of the article, which covers various elements of flametending and fire associated with Brigid - traditional flametending, the hearth in the home, and the festival flame. There are lots of good things that are touched on in there, and you'll find some liturgy there too. As noted, though, this is the "short" version, so keep a look out for the long version.

Also worth noting is this statement from the CAORANN council, which I've been involved with for some time now. There's also this one, which touches on a worrying trend in some parts of the wider pagan communities as well as the reconstructionist ones:

Recently there is a movement on the part of some non-Natives - Americans, Canadians and Europeans - to identify as "Indigenous European." The first people to use this phrase were white supremacist groups, who are appropriating the term "Indigenous" to make it seem like white people are somehow an oppressed minority. Others are appropriating it because they have racist stereotypes of Native people as all "mystical" and therefore white folks who call themselves "Indigenous" are somehow more mystical too. We have seen non-Natives using this cloak of "Indigenous European" in an attempt to colonize councils of actual Indigenous people, and to even lead and pretend to speak for real Indigenous People. This is an act of racism and attempted cultural genocide.

The bit about "Indigenous Europeans" (or on this side of the Pond, "Indigenous Britons", even, mainly because the people concerned about this kind of thing don't tend to like Europe much either) is something that's a common refrain in certain political parties or organisations in the UK at the moment, though thankfully they're very much in the minority (and hopefully it will stay that way). And really, it's something that's no stranger to certain parts of the wider pagan communities too, even though the wording and phraseology has maybe changed over the years - though rightly or wrongly the outright white supremacist stuff is probably more commonly associated with groups like Ásatru. I've encountered it from people who have identified as Celtic Reconstructionist in one form or another in the past as well, though thankfully it's very much something that's not common to CR as a whole. But that's not the only kind of racism that's out there and the kinds of responses and attitudes that have come about as a result of the Idle No More movement gaining a wider audience have made that point painfully clear.

So given all that - and as if our other Facebook pages and groups aren't enough - if you'd like to join us on the new CAORANN Facebook page, then feel free to like it.