My father’s pony

Not all of us had functional fathers, or parents that were present. Neither of my parents were cut out for the job of marriage, let alone, raising a child. Let’s just say, it’s complicated. Mine was an absentee father who drowned in the belly of a Seagram’s 7 bottle, and never recovered. His heart failed him. It’s heartbreaking that he turned out to be such a tragically flawed individual. From a photo I learned that he loved Big Band music and played the piano. Recently I found a news clipping—very nearly accidentally—where it reported that  his mother had committed suicide using rat poison, leaving him to find the body after school. And a note saying that he should join the priesthood. The only thing I was ever told was that she had committed suicide, nothing more. Finding the news clipping was devastating. Also enlightening. And with that, came the beginning of compassion. No wonder the poor man was so effed up. His father, a San Francisco cop, died earlier of TB. Perhaps it was all too much for her, being a single mother, and it sounded like she suffered from depression. And a sadist uncle stepped in to raise my poor father. He might have been better off in a foster home. I chose this photo of my father on a pony because obviously it was a time of innocence versus the grim reality of what was to follow. My crazy, gorgeous, talented, bipolar mother wasn’t much better a parent. She left me with my grandmother as she went off to design costumes for Frank Sinatra’s showgirls, and to pursue Hollywood dreams—but then, when she came to collect me, I refused to leave my grandmother. I was extraordinarily lucky in that my grandmother raised me. She was both my mother and my father. And I don’t regret that in the least. However I refuse to close ranks for the sake of Hallmark cards or sympathy, by hiding the unacknowledged family trauma caused nearly as much damage and grief as the myriad traumas themselves, that is why I chose to share this story. I’m not one to latibulate. Cormac McCarthy, God Rest his Soul, ain’t got nothing on my family tree! After all that, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. For those of you who had extraordinary fathers in your lives, I wish you all a Happy Father’s Day.

THE MAD OLD COW DAYS

These last three days of March are roaring 

their way out like a pride of hungry lions. 

The chilblains of the borrowed days of the brindled cow,

what the Irish monks called Laethanta na Bó Riabhai, 

are among us, making ancestors of our ancient ones. 

Complaining about the second childhood of cattle,

groundhog shadows, or the vagaries of weather is pointless. 

The almanac of winter love, dressed in sleet and snow, 

aquamarine and bloodstone, gets final say—

despite rolling out the new year’s equinox pledge.

It’s a portmanteau payback for those three stolen days 

in February, a false spring Jezebel that showered us 

with a swale of narcissus and blackthorn blossoms,

So, mad March stole a day from April, and the old cow died.

Cruelest April also promises a compound interest plan,

it rolls up its cuffs, trading taxable per deum days

with the war god, Mars, despite a shepherd’s wild vow 

of a sacrifice of a firstborn suckling lamb to slake 

the insatiable hunger that is the madness of March.

3/29/23

Extensively revised 3/31

To be fair, it was barely more than a line, ok so, the first two lines.  

See duchas, The Riabhach days, An unpleasant sting in the tail of March

March borrowed from April

Three days and they were ill

The first was snow and sleet

The next was cold and wet

The third was such a freeze

The birds's nests stuck to trees

Who am I on this international day of women?

March 8, 2023. Who am I on this international day of women? I am of Ireland where every place has a name and every name has a meaning. I am of four generations of strong Irish women: my great-grandmother, Jane/Sineád Rose Sullivan/Ó Súilleabháin (dark/hawk-eyed) (Walsh/Breathnach-from Wales), from Gortnascreena/GortnaScríne (place of the standing stone), Drimoleague (Droim Dhá Liag, ridge of two stones), near Skibbereen (An Sciobairín, a place of small skiffs). 

I am of Ireland. Her daughter, my grandmother, Jenny/Sineád Walsh (Reilly/Ó Raghallaigh-valiant), from Coom-anOre/Com an Óir (hollow or Valley of gold-as in a goldmine), really another place of standing stones between the River Bandon (Abhainn na Bandan, ban-dea, as in Tuatha Dé, the goddess), near Dunmanway (Dúnmaonmhuí, Dún Mánmha, the fort of yellow haired? women) and Bantry (Beanntraí, place of Beann's people (ban/ben = peak, point, prong, horn or top), Co. Cork (Corcaí/corcach, marsh). 

I am of Ireland. My grandmother, who begat Maureen/Máirín Reilly (Hurley/O hUirthile-descendants of some warrior dude, ok, it means sea-tide), San Francisco, and my mother who begat me, Maureen Hurley, Máirín ni hUirthile of San Francisco. 

Ich am of Irlonde,
Ant of the holy londe
Of Irlonde.

Goode sire, praye ich thee,
For of sainte charitee,
Com ant daunce wyt me
In Irlonde.

Medieval Irish Lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD)

I am of Ireland. Come and dance with me. What’s in a name? I can trace my mothers back to six generations of strong Irish women. My great-grandmother’s mother was Kate Connolly/O'Conghaile (descendant of Conghal, fierce wolf/hound), also born in Gortnascreena, whose mother was Julia Downey, or Devney (no v or w in Irish, O'Dunadhaigh- keeper /defender of the fort), from Esk, Kerry (an Eisc-the Fish? Or uisce?) Esk (a place of waterfalls) is a mountain near Glengarriff, overlooking Dingle, on the Beara Peninsula. 

Kerry is Ciarraí, or Ciarraighe, meaning the people of Ciar (the dark ones), the name of a pre-Celtic? tribe. The legendary founder of the tribe was Ciar, son of Fergus mac Róich, the son of great stallion. That takes us back into the mythological cycle. And there the trail ends. 

Who am I? I am all these women The entire maternal side of my family is 100% Irish, a rarity, despite the Walsh name. I guess you could say my ancestors came from between a few rocks and quite a few hard places. Then there’s my father’s side, also from near the River Bandon. But from there, the trail leads across the sea to Antigonish, and becomes murky, from Boston to SF, where Viola Mae Heaney, my other grandmother was born of a dysfunctional family, and so the generational trail of mental abuse ends with me.

BONFIRE

The horses crave more than oats, 

the cats crave more than kibble, 

the arroyo willow seeks water 

and will change course to follow it. 

The hawthorne keeps a date with the wee folk

we knew that picking blossoms led to trouble. 

We feared the changelings and built bonfires

while the darkness stripped the cold heart of ice.

2/13 with Susie Terence

A HOARDER OF SMALL THINGS

I am a hoarder of small things with plain stories to tell 

if you look closely enough. How that one lone yellow die, 

buried in the dirt—its lost mates, long gone—

still hankered for the darkness of the leather liar’s cup 

that tumped down on the mahogany bar like a fist

at Speck McAuliffe‘s Lagunitas Lodge. He rolled the dice.

The long mahogany bar was my runway, sticky as flypaper, 

where I could crawl and observe the adults up close. 

My aunts, thirsty after picking berries in the creek,

amid sizzling crickets and relentless summer heat, 

nursed tall Tom Collinses garnished with lime, while I

was thinking of the pies that my grandmother would make.

And Old Pete, the last real cowboy, a mule skinner,

perched on a stool at the end of the bar that no one dared use, 

rolled his cigarettes one-handed, and lived out back 

in a Slipstream, with his strawberry roan in a makeshift corral.

And Speck wiping down the bar with a threadbare rag,

told stories punctuated by a nasal Boston drone 

by way of the Mission, like a politician or petty king.

Those ivory dice decided the transitory fate of so many, 

from who was going to buy the next round, calling out

from snake eyes to boxcars, was there enough time 

to knock back another one, or to leave the wife behind?

After all, it was midday. In the cavernous darkness of that bar, 

time itself was suspended. On leave. But no one ever turned 

down the politics of a free boilermaker or a whiskey neat.

I listened to their unfinished stories that bled like old wounds, 

ate the odd snack of stick matches or cigarette butts, seeds  

that even Pete’s mean old green parrot, rejected.

He swore like a sailor every time that liar’s cup hit the bar, 

and churlishly rejected my childish offerings,

no matter how carefully I tried to disguise them 

amid the hulls of sunflower seeds. His baleful yellow eyes

like small suns followed me as he edged closer 

to grab my finger, his black leathery tongue 

and cruel beak seeking revenge on all humankind.

8/10 Write On! Susie Terence 

• See part 1, The collector

Lá Fhéile Lúghnasa Sona Daoibh go léir

Lá Fhéile Lúghnasa Sona Daoibh go léir. Lá fhéile' translates as 'feast day', 'lá' is 'day'. Sona translates to 'happy'. Sort of. And, 'daoibh' means 'to youse'. Singular is ‘duit.’ And ‘go léir’ is an extra everybody and y’all thrown in for good measure. The ‘go’ is a timeless oddity sometimes translated as may (you) as in may you all have a right grand time. And if you wanted to toss some extra blessings in you’d tack on Beannachtaí to the front end of that sentence.

“Peace to sky. Sky to earth. Earth under sky, strength in each, a cup full, full of honey, mead in plenty. —Cath Tánaiste Maige Tuired (2nd Battle of Moytura).

And as promised, the second installment of Lúghnasadh. 

Lúnasa, the beginning of harvest season, technically begins Aug 7 because our modern calendar doesn’t quite jive or jibe if you prefer, with cross-quarter celebrations juxtaposed halfway  between the solstice and equinox. 

Lúghnasadh is one of four agrarian festivals, once called Brón Trogain (the earth’s sorrow), followed by Samhain, Imbolc and Beltane. The Welsh equivalent of Lúghnasadh is Gŵyl Awst, in Breton, Gouel Eost (August festival), and the English equivalent is Lammastide (I mentioned that last week). 

The beginning of the harvest season is called Lúnasa in modern Irish (also the name for August—no Caesar here!), Lùnastal, in Scots Gaelic, and: Luanistyn in Manx/Vannin. But it’s the same bringing in the sheaves party however it’s spelled.

Dedicated to the god Lugh Lámhfhada, Lugh of the Long Arm—master of all the arts, this end of summer celebration marks the beginning of harvest season, also referred to as Lammastide, and to the Tailteann Games. Lúghnasadh ( -násad means an assembly) was a time of visiting holy wells, with lots of feasting, fighting, and fu- I mean, matchmaking, and horse and cattle trading. Possibly some raiding too.

The earliest written reference recording the Games and festivities is during the 15th c. in the redaction of Tochmarc Emire ("the Wooing of Emer"). Writing came rather late to Ireland, a country steeped in oral tradition since time immemorial, during the early Medieval era—there was a lot of catching up to do to record and preserve the distant past. First came the threat of the Vikings to annihilate Irish culture, followed by the larcenous British Monarchy. My grandmother said, Sinn Féin: Ourselves, Alone. Or, We, Together are saving culture story by story, no matter how imperfectly told.

Lammastide and Lúnasa

Image: “Lammastide,” British postage stamp, 1981.

Lúnasa, the beginning of harvest season, technically begins Aug 7 because our modern calendar doesn’t quite fit with the cross-quarter day celebrations between the solstice and equinox. Dedicated to the god Lugh Lámhfhada, this harvest celebration and Tailteann Games, marks the beginning of the harvest season, also celebrated as Lammastide in Britain and Northern Ireland. I’ll give Lugh his due on Aug 7.

Today, Lammas Day, aka Loaf Mass Day, from Hlaef-masse, is celebrated Aug 1. The hlafsenunga, 'blessing of bread,' from segnian, is 'to make the sign of the cross.’ The Auld Lammas Fair, a traditional fair dating back to the Renaissance, is held in Ballycastle, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, every year on the last Monday and Tuesday of August. There is also a Welsh variant, Gŵyl Awst that ties in with Lammas Day rituals. 

In a book of Anglo-Saxon charms (no, not Bede who was strangely silent on the subject), Anglo Saxon monks blessed the first loaf of the new harvest, the Lammas bread, decorated and baked in the shape of a sheave, an owl, or a corn dolly, broken into four farls, and tucked in the corners of the barn to protect the new harvest from vermin and harm. 

Corn dollies were made with the last sheaf of grain so that the spirit of the corn had a place to winter over until they were turfed into the ground during the first plow. (Corn means grain, not maize.) The time of the agrarian goddess and the Greenman, a time of blessing of the First Fruits of harvest. 

The Old English name for autumn is hærfest. A sheep was let loose in the stubble fields and whoever caught it got to keep it. It was also rent day. In many parts of England, tenants brought sheaves of freshly harvested wheat to their landlords on the first day of August. The landlords in turn, gave their tenants a gift of a pair of gloves at Lammastide to show their authority and benevolence. 

A day that debts were settled, labourers hired, households moved, contracts and promises made. And from that, arises the term, “latter Lammas,” a day that will never come. And of course, there is John Barleycorn, who must die.

A note on native foodways in the British Isles vs. foods introduced by Romans

I read an interesting post in a Facebook group, British Medieval History, on foodways where someone said, “Introduced by the Romans to Britain: Apples, asparagus, turnips, peas, garlic, cabbages, onions, leeks, cucumbers, artichokes, figs, chestnuts, cherries, celery, wine, plums, etc...”

The list struck me as wrong. I was off and running when I saw that the thread commentor, Paul Davis had credited the Romans with bringing apples to the British Isles. I told him, I suspect if you dig deeper you’ll find that apples were not introduced by the Romans. 

Specific species of apples, cabbage and onions, probably were probably introduced, but apples, kales, and wild onions too were part of the northern European Neolithic landscape. And there were plenty of native brassicas as well. Don’t forget the color woad comes from a brassica. 

Cabbage was domesticated in Western Europe ca. 1000 BC, probably by the Celts. Brassica is from from bresic, a Celtic word for cabbage. Whether native or feral, brassica species favored the white limestone cliffs of Dover, and the Isle of Wight. Brassica oleracea has successfully crossed with native brassica species so it’s impossible to tell them apart. And then there’s another continental shared species, arbutus, or strawberry tree, native to Ireland, but curiously not to Britain. 

I am no botanist or scientist, but I did extensive research on apples, because the information struck me as wrong that apples were introduced to the British Isles via Rome, via Kazakhstan. Also, apples, specifically crabapples, played a significant central role in Irish and Welsh mythology. Then there’s Avalon, the isle of apples. The reason being that certain plant species were circumpolar, such as the corylus, rosids, vaccinium, malus, prunus, brassicaceae and allium—sort of like reindeer/caribou, foxes, etc., so no one region can claim species origin. 

Imbolc offering to Brigid, simultaneous saint & goddess, ca. 2000

I made a Celtic scarf as a prop for finals in my MA MFA playwriting classes on monologue at San Francisco State University in 2000. Making the scarf went off without a hitch, after a lot of research, I banged the drawing out in about 45 minutes, and another hour or so for painting it with dye. The pin I was using to hold it in place, slid off during my monologue, and Justin Chinn dinged my performance for a costume fail. It was a class monologue reading for fucksake, not a public performance. He was an absolutely horrid teacher, resting on recent minor theatrical accolades, and he should never have been teaching. The class was a required waste of space, so I called him on it. He gave me a C-minus for the class. I fought the low grade and won. But the A-minus dropped my entire MA/ MFA perfect GPA to 3.9. May he rot.

I also simultaneously used the St. Brigid scarf for a final in my Celtic studies class with Professor Dan Melia at UC Berkeley. I came to class dressed as the goddess/St. Brigid, so it must’ve been around Imbolc, February, 1, 2000, as I began the long poem in October of 1999. I’m not too sure where the poem came from, as it was something that literally possessed me, written in a fugue, augmented with facts—after the fact, as it were. Probably because I was devouring medieval Celtic timelines, including the Annals of the Four Masters, so my brain was oversaturated. I wish I had kept a first draft of the poem as the original might have given me a way back to the source, and an entirely different revision might have evolved. But without that long-winded piece of didacticism, the scarf would’ve never came to be. Art works in mysterious ways.

For my Brigid costume, I made a halo of twelve candles (with little battery operated Xmas lights) I was dressed in purple robes, a green Celtic shawl for a cape, a kirtle with all her symbols attached to the costume, including a poem, an iron horseshoe, a candle, and a rubber chicken, I read a poem monologue, and prepared a traditional Celtic feast for the class. Salmon, bread, and beer as she was the goddess of bread making, and beer making. Dan sniggered and said, you can’t bring alcohol to class, pocketing the Guinness for later. I got an A-plus. Sadly, I don’t have a clear in-focus photo of the scarf when it was fresh.

BRIGID/BRIGIT  A triune goddess of:

1) healing                             (therapy)

2) blacksmiths                    (fire)

3) fertility & poetry  (light—poets/seers, divination, prophecy)

Protest Songs, a nod to Behan’s Patriot Game vs Dylan’s With God on Our Side

KQED’s editor, Gabe Meline, a former poetry student of mine, not that he would admit it, asked where are all the new protest songs, he was bemoaning the fact that modern musicians are not writing protest songs in the manner of Dylan.

Last week, after escalating attacks on Iran and the president declaring the United States has "God on our side," I couldn't help but think of the lines by Bob Dylan:

One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side

That song, "With God on Our Side," was written over 50 years ago. So where are the new protest songs? It's a question that's surfaced repeatedly in the past four years. And I keep hearing, especially from our younger readers, that it's the wrong question to be asking — that the aesthetics and process of art are political, too, and more effective than earnest sloganeering.

I had to laugh, as the very word slogan, is from the Irish, a war cry. Irish sluagh-ghairm (sluagh "army host" + gairm "cry"). The word slogan from the Old Irish, slúag, and garim, is hardly new, as it appeared in early medieval Irish texts, where Irish folk hero Cuchulain talked about being on the war road.

Whether or not the term slogan entered the English lexicon in the 16th century via Scottish Gaelic, or Irish, is open for conjecture, as most Irish words in the Oxford English dictionary were subsumed and attributed to Scottish Gaelic as the English made a blood sport of negating or discrediting Irish cultural contributions whenever possible.

The great rip off game, as my grandmother might have called it. In the early 1960s my grandmother waited for her beloved radio program where she’d wrap her arms around the radio to give it better reception. I remember her muttering how Bob Dylan stole the Irish song and didn’t give credit where credit was due.

It’s interesting to read the Washington Post article that laments how our current lame protest music is stuck in the past, because the past is exactly where that Dylan song came from. But on some level all art is political. And as to the aesthetics and artifice of art, there is always a moral debt to the past, whether overt, or implied, as to who or what came before us. Art cannot exist in a vacuum. It is always in direct response to modern politics and pop culture. But maybe the newest generation of protest writers are operating out of a vacuum. So looking back to the past is also the way forward. What came before.

Speaking of moral debt, Dylan’s song With God on Our Side was cribbed and adapted from an Irish protest song, The Patriot Game, on the the Irish nationalist struggle after the death of 16-year-old Fergan O'Hanlon during an IRA attack in 1957. The words were written by Dominic Behan, brother of Brendan Behan, and set to a traditional tune "The Merry Month of May" with nary a nod to Behan or the Irish, for that matter.

Behan, who was unequivocal in the defence of his copyright, publicly accused Bob Dylan of plagiarizing "The Patriot Game" in writing his own "With God on Our Side". —Wiki 

To answer Gabe's question why aren’t the young musicians writing decent protest songs about what’s going on right now in Iran, I’d suggest that they take Dylan‘s song and update the words to fit the present tense. After all, it is all part of the oral tradition to borrow and adapt what came before. Dylan would understand. He’d totally get it, right? Payback would be such a sweet bitch.

Boxing Day, or how the wren was killed

Ireland: its scenery, character etc.(Volume I, S.C. Hall. London:
Virtue & Co., 1843. D. Maclise, engraved by Landells.

Today is Boxing Day, or St. Stephen’s Day, as my grandmother called it. When I was a child, I wondered what pugilists, saints, and tiny wrens had in common. I may have gotten the boxer part wrong. There were no boxers in the arena, or cardboard boxes, for that matter—but there were bad boys involved. She said, the day after Christmas, you boxed up all your food and old clothing and gave it to the poor. A sort of second Christmas.

She then told me the story of how, when she was young, the boys of Bantry would dress in straw and tattered rags, put on masks and parade a dead wren about the town. The wren boys would put the poor bird on a tall pole adorned with ribbons, and evergreens, mistletoe and pine, holly and ivy. Then they’d parade the wee beastie about the village, beating their drums, waving their bullroarers, creating musical mayhem on everybody’s front steps. I was horrified. No, no, not the wren!

As if killing the wren wasn’t enough, gangs of boys demanded a ransom in exchange for a wren’s feather, and collected small coins from everybody in the village to bury the poor bugger. What they did with the money, she never said. Give us a penny to bury the wren. If you haven't a penny a halfpenny will do/ If you haven't a halfpenny/ Well then, God bless you. Apparently the coinage was collected to fund a Wren’s ball sometimes in January. Perhaps for the Epiphany. Boxing Day was the British renaming of the Feast of St. Stephen. Then there’s the Druidic winter feast. So, Wren Day is a triad compromise of faiths and liminal boundaries.

Perhaps to appease me, she said sometimes they caged the wren and then let him go after the festivities were done. I thought maybe she had gotten her stories crossed because what she described sounded suspiciously like Halloween trick-or-treat—with a Christian flair—except for the addition of  the effigy of the wily wren, a rat fink bird (who betrayed St. Stephen, the first martyr stoned to death for believing in Jesus. I had forgotten that part of the story, too grisly and too convoluted to follow.)

She then followed up with another story of how The birds argued who was the king of the birds. The wren and eagle dickered over who could fly the highest. The eagle flew up as high as he could, but the wren, hidden on his back, leapt off the back of the eagle to fly the highest, thus proclaiming himself to be the king of birds. I knew there was a moral imperative embedded in the story, I wasn’t sure exactly what. So I imagined the wren wearing a tiny crown of thorns, of course.

One dreary day, not too long ago, a small wren slipped into the house by the back door. I had a devil of a time catching it, and when I did, it had a lot to say, clearly I was being roundly cursed by a wren, I opened my palm, and let it go, it wasn’t letting bygones be bygones. It fiercely scolded me from the safety of the garden gate as if I were responsible for all that mayhem.

‘Dreoilín, Dreoilín, Rí na nÉan,
Dreoilín a fuaireas-sa thíos ar an inse,
Istigh fé charraig agus carbhat síoda air,
Thugas-sa chugaibhse é, lánúin an tí seo,
Agus má thugann sibh onóir na Féile dom’ Dhreoilín
Le bhur lámha do shíneadh,
Go mbeire an bhliain fé mhaise agus fé áthas arís oraibh.’

The wren the wren the king of all birds,
Saint Stephen's day he got caught in the furze,
Although he is little his family is great,
Cheer up landlady an give us a treat,
Up with the kettle and down with the pan,
Give us some money to bury the wren!

Dreoilín, dreoilín, where's your nest?
'Tis in the bush that I love best
In the tree, the holly tree
Where all the boys do follow me.

Samhain, a cross-quarter festival

Oíche Shamhna Shona Daoibh! Happy New Year. May the Gates of the Otherworld stay open long enough for you to escape the coming darkness. And mind the Galoshins!

Astronomically speaking, Samhain should be celebrated November 11, which means that gates of the otherworld are open until November 16. Beware!

Modern calend dates are somewhat meaningless as the Julian calendar was off by ten days when the Gregorian calendar was introduced.

In the 8th c., Samhain was shoehorned into the Christian festival calendar of saints, and the original Roman festival of the dead that was celebrated in in May, and later, the Mexican El Día de los Muertos (originally celebrated in summer) was added to the mix. (See my rant, El Dia de los Muertos was moved atop our Day of the Dead/New Year.

Blame Pope Boniface IV for that mass conflagration of holidays to the dead now celebrated on Nov. 1 & 2.

The Celtic fire festivals are held on the cross-quarter days, midway point between the solstices and equinoxes. Samhain means summer’s end. It is part of a harvest-pastoral, or hunter’s festival calendar. Imbolc is the beginning of spring (first milk) and Beltane is the beginning of summer, followed by the games gathering festival of Lugnasa. And the church tacked on a whole slew of saints to each of these festivals in an attempt to desecularize them. Didn’t exactly work.

There is some thought that the festivals predate the coming of the Celts, which is plausible, as the Bell Beaker folk were sometimes called proto-Celts—at least by my anthropology professor. However, the megalithic standing stone monuments wouldn’t record any astronomical alignment to denote the timing of these fire festivals as they’re aligned to the solstices and equinoxes, not the cross-quarter days.

According to the early medieval Irish epics, that reflect an earlier oral tradition, Samhain was equally celebrated in Ireland, and much of the modern Halloween tradition was introduced to Scotland from Ireland.

Whose? I did a Google image search via Sean Folsom, no luck.

The Celtic wheel of the year with the cross-quarter days, nestled between the solstices and equinoxes. Samhain, the end of summer and the beginning of winter, is a harvest festival, (Halloween), followed by Imbolc, or spring (first milk), and Beltane, (May Day) or the beginning of summer, and Lugnasadh, the time for the great games and clan gathering—which lives on today as the Highland Games. Lughnassad (no double s, btw—) or Lunasa, is the festival of Lugh, is the beginning of August. It lives on in Ireland as the Puck Fair. Someone’s thrown in some other festivals. Oestara was not a Celtic festival, nor was Litha, or Yule, but Mabon was celebrated on the continent. It’s a bit of a mishmash, as someone was trying to shoehorn Roman, Germanic, and astrological signs into one thing. It doesn’t work like that. It’s not an antikythera...you can’t mix apples and oranges and a box of thumbtacks and expect it to make a fruit salad

Summer’s End

We’re fast approaching the end of the Celtic year, Samhain, or Summer’s End, which marks the half way mark, or cross-quarter day between the equinox and the solstice. The night when the boundary between this world and the otherworld are thinnest. The night of the great bonfires, where my great-grandfather ran his cattle between two fires to purify them (the other cross quarter day was Beltane)—the smoke was probably also a great pest deterrent. To be fair, the celebration of the cross-quarter days predates the arrival of the Celts, but they took to the custom like ducks to water, or sparks to flame.

In 609AD, Pope Boniface IV decreed November 1 as All Saints Day, or Allhallowmesse, thus placing a Christian spin on the Celtic celebration of Samhain. And since the festival lasted several days, we have Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day as well.

The Irish brought the vestiges of Samhain, rechristened Halloween by the church, to America, and to Scotland. In America, Halloween took off and became the secular extravaganza it is today, thanks to the candy industry, who saw a profit was to be made. During WWII, American GIs stationed in Germany, put on a Halloween festival in a castle, thus reintroducing elements of Samhain to its original Celtic homeland, and also back to Ireland as well.

We associate Halloween with zombies and characters like Frankenstein, but that story was penned during one dreary dreecht summer in Geneva by Irish lass, Mary Shelley, on a bet to produce a ghost story. Galvanizing the dead fits right into the premise of Samhain, or Halloween when the gates to the otherworld are open, the cauldron of plenty could raise the dead, and anything was possible.

Photos of my mom and Sean Ritter who killed himself 11 years ago.

How beautiful my mother looks in this photo with her new fiery redhead granddaughter Tiffany, and her son Sean, who ended his life 11 years ago, today, rather than face a draconian 3 strikes prison system. He went to prison at 21, on two counts of drug possession charges. He got into a fight in a parking lot, thus breaking his parole, so he went home and shot himself in his garage rather than return to Pelican Bay.

Sean was my half-brother, but raised as a cousin as my childless aunt Toddy who desperately wanted children and couldn't have any, or so she thought. After she adopted Sean, she had three kids of her own. Sean's father was a Dublin man, that's all we know. Somebody my mother met at the No Name Bar in Sausalito. Perhaps he was a sailor, a carpenter, or someone just passing through. He must've been a redhead or a strawberry blond like Sean. My mother never saw him again, but I'm sure she was reminded of him every time she saw Sean. Is the father still alive somewhere in Dublin, we wonder. What was his name? Who were his people? Did he ever know he had a son in America?

In the photo, my mother has no breasts, a cancer survivor, the implants will leak and bring back the cancer, it will grow undetected behind that wall of silicone. She will die of a heart attack after her first round of chemo October 23, 1994. This month is such a melancholy time for me, as my grandmother, and mother also died during the final days of October, also the end of the Celtic year. My grandmother died Oct 28, not quite Samhain, Summer's End, but close enough for the transition when the door to the Otherworld opens. Half way between the equinox, my mother's birthday, to the solstice, Samhain is the beginning of winter, or the dark half of the year. We will light a bonefire for them so that they may see the way forward.

My mom, Maureen Reilly, sister Kathleen (Toddy) Ritter, sons Myles, Sean, baby Tiffany & Judy Ritter.

Good Friday translation rant, aka an odd insomnia cure

I awoke 4 AM, with a blinding headache, from pulling recalcitrant honeysuckle vines from the engulfed Meyer lemon tree. I was in dire pain and the Advil hadn't yet kicked in, so there I was, with full-on insomnia, resurrecting my rusty Irish translation skills on a Facebook genealogy site. Perfect thing to do on the aftermath of Good Friday, no?

It's almost impossible to resurrect the meaning of Irish placenames as they've been Englishified and phoneticized to death. The English attempt to destroy a language. With no small thanks to the Royal Engineers and the 1833 Ordnance Survey. Irish playwright Brian Friel's play,Translations, tackles the systematic disembowelment of the Irish language by the English hellbent on cultural imperialism. But sometime enough of the original ghost Irish remains behind to see the meaning behind a placename.

Defiant Fruitcakes

Filed under "Lost Desserts" Hundred-Year-Old Antarctic Fruitcake Found in 'Excellent Condition Conservators with Antarctic Heritage Trust have uncovered a perfectly preserved fruitcake that dates back to Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition, which began in 1910.

A curious headline made me think of my Victorian grandmother who made fruitcake, or steamed pudding, every fall for Christmas gifts. It did seem like they would keep forever. I guess that Hundred-Year-Old Antarctic Fruitcake Found in 'Excellent Condition is proof enough. The proof is in the pudding, literally.

When the nights began to draw in, my grandmother would haul out the dried fruit she had stockpiled in the closet, usually three types of raisins, including tiny tart currants (real currants, not tiny raisins), and golden sultanas; prunes (sometimes she added dried figs, or Medjool dates— but that was rare); candied ginger, and the prerequisite jars of preserved glacéed fruit—a mixture of citrus, citron (candied melon peel) and candied cherries. (She used to make glacéed fruit from scratch—I remember helping her make candied orange rinds.) She'd gather kidney suet for the lard. And a bottle of port.

We'd crack pecans and walnuts from 25-pound bags, tossing the buggy ones in the fire along with the shells. They'd sizzle and hiss like snakes as we gazed into the fire while she told me stories.

In Ireland, Valencia oranges were a special Christmas gift. They arrived from Spain wrapped in foil, and were cherished right down to the rind. Dried raisins and nuts were hard to come by, and spices were a luxury few could afford, so women hoarded the ingredients, when they could get them, for that special steamed Christmas pudding or wedding cake. In Ireland, wedding cakes are traditionally fruitcakes: a symbol of wealth and abundance.

The key ingredients of the fruitcake were part of a curious family history. They were foot soldiers marching in an act of defiance against unjust American land laws. During the 1920s, Asians and Indians, ineligible for US citizenship, couldn't own farmland in California. This made my Irish grandfather angry, so he bought farmland in Fresno for his friend Jahn Singh, and held the land title to circumvent the unjust alien land laws. 

As she assembled the fruitcakes, she told stories of my grandfather and Jahn Singh. Every autumn Jahn Singh remembered our family with bushels of fruits and nuts. My grandmother would receive crates of oranges, raisins, pecans and walnuts as payment for the Fresno farmland that my grandfather had bought for Jahn. 

When the anti-Japanese California Alien Land Laws of 1913, and of 1920, also known as the Webb-Haney Act, were repealed in the 1950s, my grandfather turned the land title over to Jahn Singh. 

The law prohibited "aliens ineligible for citizenship " from owning agricultural land or possessing long-term leases over it. It affected the Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Korean immigrant farmers in California....The California Alien Land Law of 1920 continued the 1913 law filling many of its loopholes... the leasing of land for a period of three years or less was no longer allowed; owning of stock in companies that acquired agricultural land was forbidden; and guardians or agents of ineligible aliens were required to submit an annual report on their activities. —Wiki

Something ancient was evoked as my grandmother assembled the ingredients. Assembling fruitcake was a multiple-day affair, from making the candied fruit, to shelling the nuts, and soaking the dried fruit overnight in alcohol.

My grandmother soaked the dried fruit overnight in port, or rum. Next morning, she sifted the flour with baking soda, and a litany of spices (equal parts cinnamon, ginger, and a scant measurement of nutmeg, allspice, clove and mace) to coat the dried fruit and nutmeats. Then she doused the dry mixture with a mixture of creamed butter, eggs, brown sugar and dark molasses. During Prohibition, bootleg whiskey was used to soak the dried fruit if a bottle of port couldn't be finagled from the church stores.

My grandmother mixed the ingredients up with her large knotted hands in vast ceramic vats, standing over them like a field marshall. The round, and half-round cake pans were already well greased and the bottoms lined with oiled brown paper bags.

She filled the cake pans to the brim (fruitcake doesn't leaven, or rise—though the dried fruit soaking in alcohol, may have contributed some wild yeast), tamping them down on the table with soft thuds to dislodge any air bubbles. Then she placed the cakes in three tiers on tall racks inside the vast aluminum canning pot half-filled with water. The canning pot was a modern day version of the cauldron—double-trouble, boiled and bubbled. 

The fruitcakes were steamed atop the stove for several hours, they were never baked in the oven. That would’ve been sacrilege. The steam vent atop the canning pot lid, with its three roller latches, chattered a little song and tapdance into the evening hours as I drew pictures with my finger on the steamy kitchen windows dripping with condensation. By the way, fruitcake, a steamed pudding, is a medieval dish, pretty much unchanged across the centuries. Her recipe was practically straight from The Forme of Cury. 

Once the fruitcakes (or steamed pudding) had cooled overnight, there was a three-fold bathing ritual (in port or whiskey) a swaddling ritual (wrapped in thin muslin or in cheesecloth), and a cloaking ritual (in tinfoil), before they were placed in their air-tight Christmas tins. They needed to be carefully tended during the first few months, dressed and bathed every few days until they ripened. She kept a few extra fruitcakes on hand to ripen, as fruitcake was deemed best when it was left to ripen (or ferment) at least 3 months, to a year, or longer. A union of space and time.

Fruitcake (aka figgy pudding) was never eaten fresh from the steamer. The flavors needed time to mellow and meld into a rich marriage of spiced goodness. Months, years, even. She had a few fruitcake that were ancient. Not 100 years old, but old enough. The time-defying secret was in the ritual bathing in booze. Fruitcakes were unwrapped to receive an annual anniversary bath of booze to preserve them, then rewrapped, placed in tins, and stored in dark cupboards. And later, they were delegated to the back of the refrigerator. And forgotten.

Whenever unexpected guests came over, she'd bring out thin slices of the dense, boozy, nut-studded fruitcake, along with the pot of Irish tea and a sidecar of whiskey. The thin fruitcake slices were like a rich mosaic of stained glass panes on the shining plates, Sadly, the guests wouldn't touch the fruitcake, perhaps thinking it was the commercial American version, a baked sawdust hockey-puck affair, studded with plastic candied citron and day-glo cherries, so she eventually quit making it. And I never thought to ask her for the recipe.

How did the fruitcake, something once so opulent, and made with love, become such a hated symbol of the holidays? The substitution of facsimile ingredients: rancid nuts, inferior dried fruit, and the prerequisite jars of commercial glacéed fluorescent plastic fruit that swept the market during the 60s and 70s, directly led to the fruitcake's fall from grace. The honeymoon was over. Americans said, Let's call the whole thing off. Another tradition bit the dust. And the very word was beggared and denigrated to an insult of insanity: She's a real fruitcake.

It must've made my grandmother sad to let go of such a venerable tradition, to let die a family labor of love that was passed down the generations from her mother, and her mother's mother, in Ireland. A family heirloom. I still collect the fruitcake tins, though I haven't made a fruitcake, ever. None of my cousins would dream of making fruitcake today, My mother was not domestic, and all my aunts are gone now... no one left to carry on the tradition.

One of many fruitcake recipes in my grandmother’s extensive recipe collection, I found this one from Helen Civelli Brown:

Now about that case of 100-year-old Antarctic whisky on ice they found....

El Dia de los Muertos was moved atop our Day of the Dead/New Year....

There was an altar for a poet friend who died last year, Francisco Alarcon, and a woman posting it said: "Dear White People: Día de los muertos is not your Halloween!" Not knowing the background as to why El Dia de los Muertos was moved to our Day of the Dead/New Year....

I wrote back:

Hallowe'en/Samhain is when we Celts celebrate the end of the year (it's our New Year), and it's a day we also honor our visiting ancestors with food, song, and storytelling. It's a time when the doors to the Otherworld are open. Francisco was a longtime friend, and he would've also honored our traditions as well. FYI, El Dia de Los Muertos was moved atop our holiday, and there are also shared traditions. Francisco would've also honored that.

Halloween Traditions (notes for the UICC Samhain series)

Oíche Shamhna! Happy Samhain. Hallowe'en, aka All Hallows Evening, has its roots in an Irish Catholic tradition that supplanted ancient pagan Celtic Samhain customs. It was introduced to Scotland ca. the 16th century, and came to America in the 19th century via the Irish refugees.

Oíche Shamhna ( night of Samhain) Hallowe’en is the evening before the Feast of All Saints (The Hallowed Ones). But it wasn't always so. In 608 AD, Pope Boniface IV decided to commemorate all the martyrs, so the 13th of May was

designated as the Feast of All Holy Martyrs. In 837 Pope Gregory IV extended the festival to remember all the known and unknown saints. The festival was renamed the Feast of All Saints and the 1st of November was chosen for the festival. The Martyrology of Oengus written circa 800 records the Irish keeping All Saints on the 1st of November but additional feasts of All Saints of Europe on the 20th of April and All Saints of Africa on the 20th of December. Later the 1st of November became the sole commemoration date for All Saints in Ireland. The 2nd of November is the feast of All Souls a day which commemorates the faithful departed. The feast began in the 11th century and was connected with Christian concerns with death and purgatory. Later a popular belief developed that the souls in purgatory could on this day appear back on earth to haunt those who had wronged them. The souls would take the form of ghost, witches or toads. (Farmer 2011, 14). It was also believed one could help the dead on this day by giving alms in the form of coins or food (ibid). In Britain a small round cake called soul cake was made and the cakes were given out to soulers (mainly consisting of children and the poor) who would go from door to door on Halloween, singing and saying prayers for the dead. (BBC)

All-hallows or All-hallowmas (Middle English Alholowmesse: All Saints' Day) the night before was called All-hallows Eve, shortened to Halloween. Pope Gregory IV in 83 AD, moved All Hallowmas to November first. Another harvest holiday was co-opted, one celebrating a Roman Harvest Goddess (of apples) Pomona. Later, the New World Aztec holiday, which shares a remarkable amount of customs with Samhain, El Dia de los Muertos, was moved from August, and added to the melange.

The first historical reference of Hallowe'en in America dates back to 1919, The Book of Hallowe'en. A Massachusetts librarian, Ruth Edna Kelley, credited the Famine Irish with bringing Hallowe'en customs to the new world.

What's in a Nickname?

Remembering my childhood name, my cousin Dave posted this photo on my Facebook Wall.

I replied: I am The Baba! It was a name I kept well hidden from my classmates, because they teased me and sang the nursery rhyme.

Baa baa black sheep have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.
One for the master, one for the dame,
One for the little boy who lives down the lane...  

Aside from the fact that I endlessly puzzled over the identity of the little boy who lived down the lane and and wondered why did he need a big bag of black wool? What use was it to him? I'm sure he would've much rather have had coin, or chocolate or a toy sailboat. Besides, I didn't like being compared to a sheep. All that baaa-ing about. I figured out early on I was the black sheep. Trust me, I didn't trust Mother Goose either.

Who knew the nursery rhyme was a complaint against the the Great Wool Tax of 1275? Or that the master who was the evil Plantagenet King—Edward Longshanks, at that, the dame was the greedy church, or that the wool-sack itself was a symbol of power of the Lord Chancellor?

Now do the math—66% went to Church and State, and 33% went to the sheepherder. And if it was black wool, it was more valuable, as it didn't need to be dyed, therefore subject to higher taxation. No wonder there was a rebellion. And now the rhyme has been blacklisted for being politically incorrect. Talk about dyed in the wool. But I digress.

Then there's the meaning of teacher as in a monastic siddha leader, or father. Baba Muktananda, or Neem Karoli Baba. You can imagine what confusion that caused me during the dawn of the New Age.  By 1970 there were more babas out there than I could count. A swami from Miami? No, Marin.

Since one didn't have to be a believer or profess anything to be a follower of Baba, I followed myself. I had no mother, she was off joining communes, and no father either. By that time my own father had slipped truly, madly, deeply into the deep well of Seagram's. None of this I only drink what's in the neck stuff. His middle name was DUI.

I was a self-raised swami baby. Baba means baby in Irish. I was the first grandchild. My grandparents called me Baba.We were a multi-generational family under one roof. Halcyon days. Then my grandfather died. Hell arrived with its hand-basket of tithes. My grannie sold the house and moved to the country with me in tow. And she grieved. That's how I was raised as Baba, wagging my tail behind me.

Now it's a sharp nostalgic sensation, a whiplash to the past when someone calls me Baba now, as it's such an old name, known only by family and close friends. But it is the only name I answered to for ages.

Maureen usually meant I was in deep trouble. Or at school. Or both. At the same time. Guess that's why I grew to like the nickname Mo... A name where I was not in trouble, or about to get into trouble, or be called on for the right answer in class that I didn't know, or did know, but was too shy to answer. So much pain associated with a given name, my mother's name, she who was crazy and unpredictable right up to the very end. Enough to drive one to drink. Did I mention I'm allergic to wool?

• NOTE: THIS POST ALONG WITH 12 OTHER POSTS WAS ERRONEOUSLY REMOVED BY BLOGGER FOR VIOLATING COMMUNITY STANDARDS ON 5/14/21. It was reinstated as a draft the next day. I am still pissed off.

Hurley: Sea Tide

"Hurley, Murihily, O Morhelly, Murley, O'hUrthuile Ó Muirthile and Morley from Murthuile meaning “sea tide,” is from mur/ muir. Of the sea tides, the Hurleys were sea-farers and mariners. A name almost exclusively from Cork, where my family hails from.

Wow! Thálatta, thálatta! The sea, the sea. A sea tidal surge as a surname suits me. I am named for the sea twiceover.

And if I play fast and loose, I can also transliterate my first name as She of the Sea (an old boyfriend, Edwin Drummond dubbed me She of the Sea), vs. little Mary, Maureen, Máirín (it's the Irish spelling, not Pokémon character fergawdsakes!).

Upon occasion, I've also been called the Morrígan, goddess of battle, strife, and sovereignty (the phantom, or great queen); the Morrígu or the plural triune, the Morrígna. She is depicted as a skald crow, or raven flying over the battlefield, and her triune animal shapes are the eel, wolf, and cow. Not solely the goddess of death, she is the goddess of wealth of the land. Her triune sister aspects are: Badb, Macha and Nemain (or Anand).

Mor may derive from an Indo-European stem, cognate with Old English maere (which  gives us "nightmare" and rí-gan translates as queen, or rather, king., from the Proto-Celtic, *Moro-rīganī-s. But in Old, and Middle Irish, it was scribed as mór, which means great, grand, big; from PIE, *Māra Rīganī-s.

There is also a connection with the Arthurian Morgan le Fay; mor may derive from a Welsh word for the sea, môr, but the scholarly argument against that derivation is that the names are from different cultures and branches of the Celtic linguistic tree. However, there are plenty of cognates in Welsh and Irish, so it is not a strong argument. (All Brythonic forms are *mor; all Goidelic forms are muir; Manx is spelled mooir). The Morrígan could be Queen of the Sea, she was tempestuous enough.

The Welsh, Mair, Manx Moirrey, Irish/Scottish: Maura, Moira (English: Mariah), with the diminutive -ín ending added, equals little Mary. Mairenn, Máirín, Maureen. But then, even the name Mary also has connotations with the sea, as in Our Lady of the Sea.  

In the Middle Ages, Mary was equated with the sea, mare, as in Stella Maris. Not that misogynistic Jewish definition of Maryam as bitterness, or bitter herbs, nor rebelliousness (well, maybe that). Mariam, as in drop of the sea. A name considered so holy in Ireland, it wasn't even used until the Renaissance.

Then there's Muirín from muir f ‎(genitive singular, and nominative plural mara). Old Irish muir, from Proto-Celtic *mori, (Welsh môr, Manx mooir), from Proto-Indo-European*móri, (Latin mare, English mere, German Meer). I guess the idea of a rough sea was always a nightmare.

Hebrew word ma'or for star and yam for the sea equals Maryam. Stella Maris, Venus. Sea-star, also Polaris, the lode-star leading the way. Once I was chosen as Queen of the May, and I crowned the statue of Mary with a crown of roses. And I was baptized at Star of the Sea. Ave Maris Stella. And I grew up in Marin, within sight of the sea, if I climbed up Mt. Barnabe.

Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother.*

Epi oinopa ponton. I'll drink to that.

Ah, the hidden poetry of naming. 

 Goleen Star of the Sea, Mizen Head, Co. Cork, most southwesterly point in Ireland —Wiki