Imbolctide

The wheel of the year turns once more, and we arrive at Imbolc, one of the four "cross-quarters" or turning points of the Celtic agricultural year. This is a festival sacred to Bride (a.k.a. Bridgit)--an Irish Goddess or Saint (you choose!) One excellent reflection on this festival can be found here. Here on the farm, we're celebrating in grand style: we're going to play at yoghurt-making while pumpkin soup simmers on the woodstove. There are also rumours of a whipped-cream cake in the making, to be flavoured with lavender or whisky!

For Northern, pre-industrial folk, this was a hard time indeed, as winter storage foods dwindled and the prospect of new nourishment glimmered and wavered far off in hunger's haze. Imagine, then, the joy that came with fresh milk as lambing time approached and the ewes "bagged up" in preparation! The old name for this cross-quarter is "Imbolc," from old Celtic words for "ewe's milk." Traditional feast items for this time featured milk and cream and butter and cheese. If you don't have time for fancy stuff, celebrate by making a yoghurt smoothie!

In the deep February cold, this was also a time to celebrate fire--the fire of creation, captured in the blacksmith's work as well as the poet's inspiration. Smiths and poets were celebrated along with midwives and dairy animals. In fresh milk and creative fire, the hopes of earthborne people are renewed!

Here is a bit of bardic work for Imbolc, with a nod to Robbie Burns, Violet Jacob, and other Scots poetic forebears. (Hmmm. Haggis & Neeps might deserve a place on tonight's table, as well. They, too, are seasonally-appropriate elements for an Imbolc feast!) The poem incorporates the imagery of the "Cailleach," (pronounced KYLE-yok) or Old Woman of Winter, whose silver hammer kept the ground hard and cold until Spring.

IMBOLCTIDE

When yon Auld Grannie gyres an gimps
an unco dance on cranreuch groond
an gies her sillar curls a crimp,
Ye ken that Imbolc's comin roond.

When sillar hammers, blaw for blaw
fa habber-haird in hinmaist hone
then haud ye fast, for soon the thaw
will prize awa cauld winter's loan.

Nae lang she'll lanesame bide, nor sup
Wi'oot the dochter she lo'es best;
Nae grannie redds the kailyaird up
But for the thocht o some comin guest!

Nae mair the lanesame anvil-drum
Will mark the pace o Grannie's dance--
The Lass o the Lintin Wand shall come
An lowpin lambies hae their chaunce--

For Grannie Cailleach's time grows short
An wee snaw-drappies rowthie ring
for Bridgit cams, blithe hope tae sport
An after Bridgit cams-- the Spring!


--copyright Mainecelt 2011

Glossary: unco=strange, cranreuch=frosty, ken=know, Imbolc=Celtic Feast/source of Groundhog's Day, blaw=blow, fa=fall, habber=stutter, hinmaist=last, haud=hold, prize=pry, awa=away, wi'oot=without, dochter=daughter, redds the kailyaird up=cleans the place, thocht=thought, comin=coming, Lintin Wand=glinting wand of Bridgit, lowpin=leaping, chaunce=chance, Cailleach=crone/Celtic Earth-Goddess, snaw-drappies=snowdrops, rowthie=abundantly, cams=comes, blithe=joyous

Hamely Fare

"What though on hamely fare we dine..." --Robert Burns, "A Man's a Man for A' That."

Wheaties may be "the Breakfast of Champions," but Robert Burns, the national poet of Scotland, was a Champion of Breakfasts. Oatmeal, butter, fish, and all manner of hearty, homely foods received his praises, as did the Common Folk who relied on these foods for survival. "Hamely" (or homely, for the non-Scots reader) was not a term of insult, but of honor and praise. "Hame" was, for Burns, the dwelling not only of the heart, but also of the belly.

January is Robert Burns' birthday month. Near his birthday on the 25th, Scots and folk of Scottish descent the world over take time to gather for a unique repast known as a "Burns Supper." Haggis is carried in to the rousing strains of bagpipes and Burns' "Ode to a Haggis" is recited with all the drama--and the best Scottish accent--the reciter can muster. Poetic toasts are made to monarchs and lads and lasses. When the glasses are set down, hired musicians or other entertainers lift the spirits. The centerpiece of the night is a speech known as "The Immortal Memory," an oratory ode to the Scottish Bard. There is much pomp and circumstance, but at the heart of this celebration is an earthy man with earthy appetites. He loved women, loved to drink, and loved to eat heartily in good company. These appetites earned him a fair amount of trouble, but also inspired tremendous creativity.

Food, creativity, and memory are always intertwined. We develop a taste for those things that link us to the past (memory) and draw us toward the future (creativity.) The health of our appetites depends partly on what we seek to feed: the body, the gnawing mind, the half-starved spirit... and food addictions have driven not just people, but entire nations, to horrific acts. Chocolate, named "theobroma" or food of the gods, has inspired countless works of art. Yet the production of this substance is still linked to child labor and slavery. My Methodist ancestors swore off sugar in their tea because of its connections with the slave trade, but couldn't bring themselves to give up the tea itself--even though tea production was almost as morally questionable. Where would humanity be--and what would international trade become-- without the consuming passions of sugar, tea, coffee, chocolate, and alcohol?

Whether we take the time to ponder it or not, all farmers--all PEOPLE-- are touched by the connections between international trade and social justice. It matters immensely where we get our food. When I choose "hamely fare," I accept the constraints of a smaller economy. I accept the seasonal limits of availability. I am forced to farm and garden sustainably so that my food--and my neighbors' food-- will continue to grow. But--like the rigid structure of a sonnet or a haiku--these limits result in fantastic creativity. When I wait all year for the sweet, short interlude of Spring's first fiddleheads, Summer's wild strawberries, Autumn's fresh meats and Winter's hearty roots, the rhythms and intervals inspire bardic joy.

As Marge Piercy writes, "Virtue: what a sunrise in the belly!" Locally-sourced food strengthens my connections to plant, animal, and human communities. Locally-sourced food holds me accountable to the farmers and growers on which my life depends. I come to know their names, their faces, their stories. Each bite of food is a sermon in miniature, a powerful reminder of grace and justice and faith. It satiates my senses and satisfies my hungry mind. It feeds my spirit as well as my body.

It's not an easy choice. It's a series of intricate puzzles and ever-present challenges. It takes work, just as growing a crop takes work--or buying fast food takes work, in the form of the hours we earn and the hours they grow, tend, process, prepare, package, serve, clean up, and dispose of what's left after our hurried meals. This morning I made pancakes with Maine-grown oatmeal, but I added a name-brand pancake mix. My lunch of smoked kippers came from a Maine fishery, but I ate them on toast from the grocer's shelf. My hot chocolate was neither organic nor fair-trade certified, but I made it with local milk. The consequence? I feel well-fed and somewhat inspired, but I also feel challenged to do better.

Eating is a political and poetic act. It is a process of relationship-building, of bringing diverse elements together. It is a process of mutual creative transformation. In this season of hard choices, may we all plant seeds of justice, tend Creation with care, and share the great harvest feast of "hamely fare" together!

If it's nae Scottish...

Ah'm...weel...gobsmacked!

Maine is the landing-place of my immigrant ancestors. My journey here has echoed theirs, in a way, as my settlement here came at the end of a month-long pilgrimage through Scotland's Highlands & Islands, a graduation gift from Celtophile friends. (That was the only time I've ever been to Scotland, but it felt eerily like home. I flew into Glasgow, took the train north, and blythely wandered from one island to the next, taking Gaelic language and music courses along the way.)

Although I will always be "from away," as the locals say, this place has drawn me back and caused me to put down roots. As my circle of Maine friends has grown, so has my delight in the state's strong Celtic connections. I discovered that Cornish fishermen were among the first European settlers in the early 1600s. I found place names like "Edinburg" and "Belfast" and "Wales." Thanks to a long line of Celtic travelers and settlers, Celtic concepts and ideas permeate the fabric of our state's culture and history. Scots words like "muckle" remain in regular usage, though the meaning has shifted. Knowing these things, and knowing my own family's history of immigration from the Scottish port of Ayr to the Maine town of Livermore Falls, I found myself moved to write. My mother's forebears--Border Reivers, rebels and patriots both--demanded a broadside ballad or a song in praise of the homeland. My father's forebears sternly recalled their heredity as brieves or law-keepers. Their ghosts called for justice, for memory's long reach.

English words didn't suit the task. I chose to write in Scots--which felt strangely comfortable, after listening to Scottish folk music and reading Scottish literature for years. Poet David Whyte once described the task thusly: "poetry is the art of saying something to yourself that you find it impossible to go back upon." I read and re-read my work to make sure it fit Whyte's description...and it did. But then I decided to submit it to a poetry contest--the only Scots-language poetry contest of which I knew, a contest that happened to be in, well, SCOTLAND.

Now the poem had to meet a more serious standard. There would be hours of fact-checking before I could take the bold and brazen step of sending the poor shivering little thing to its judgment and probable death. I searched Scots language websites, flipped back and forth through phrasebooks and dictionaries, and feshed michtily ower whether Ah'd done it richt. Finally, I sent the poem off by e-mail, expecting it to be quietly engulfed by, and lost among, the hundreds of other contest entries. It was enough to feel that I'd done something to honor my ancestors, and that I'd put great effort into doing it as well as possible with the tools I had at hand.

Here's the poem I wrote, with a caveat that you may need a good Scots dictionary nearby in order to understand it!

Screevins Frae a Bothy in Maine

Oot ayont Lewis, ayont the last lintin wing-tip
o skirlin seabirds, careenin aff craigs
whaur dings doon the ruddy Western sun,
Oot ayont strath an glen, the Border’s rollin hills,
Cap & Goon Toons & kenspeckle kirkyairds,
(Care-wairn & keekin thro lum-reek,
ash o anthracite, orange pips an chippie-wraps),

Oot ayont Ayr, anely-kent port o farin
For forebears kythed, aye, & aince mair mislaid:
(Anither muddle amang the hantle
O “Mester Robert Morrisons” on the leet…)
West o Edin(burgh), but East o the wind-
scourit Nebraska plains, the Idaho cattle-range,
an Puget Sound’s ain/ither Western Isles,
(Grossets in the kailyairds, rhodies on the braes),
Jiggin frae ane tae the neist, us unsettled settlers,
greetin gaberlunzies & sillerless sangsters seekin
Oor ain bit land:

Here, we upbigg the noo, we wabbit crofters,
Gowkin an pawky by turns,
Gang at it, ettlin, same as ilka Scot, dreyin oor ain weird on the wrang shore,
Jalousin some Grait Trowth
ayont the lint-dross, stanes an slaistered muck o History…
Kythin oor native place wis nivir wrestit, an
Kythin oor anely hame’s aye here:
The far-flung, sky-boundit ruim
O the hale blessit yirth.

--copyright MaineCelt
January 4th, 2008

Earlier this week, an e-mail came from a woman who works at the Glasgow Herald newspaper. Aye, that's Glasgow, Scotland, not just another funny Maine place-name. The poem placed second in their international contest, the first overseas entry to ever win a prize. "Astounded" doesn't begin to describe my response. There are a hantle of Scots words that suit my feelings better, but I'd start with our household favorite, "Gobsmacked."

The poem will be read aloud at a celebratory event in Scotland in November. Although I heartily wish I could attend in person, I don't plan to spend my winnings on a ticket to Scotland--it would go against certain ancestral traditions of frugality, as well as our tightly-controlled farm budget. Instead, I plan to put the prize towards the purchase of a decent laptop computer with the hope that good tools and much practice will produce a better--and more frequent--writer!