To celebrate the day of Beltaine,
wash in the May morning dew.
The woman who washes her face
in it will be beautiful;
the man who washes his hands
will be skilled with knots and nets.
Dew, they said DEW. not a feckin' downpour or monsoon! Sheesh! The rain woke me. No chance of dew. Then I remembered, the dream flooded back.... Beltaine, May Day is the night when the gates to the Otherworld open, it often comes in as if a dream. May First begins the season of the dream walkers.
* * *
I dreamed I was traveling on foot across the countryside, and in a wooded clearing, I stumbled across a wide barrow on my right. Thinking I'd stumbled upon something like the massive rabbit warrens that my grandmother crawled into as a child, seeking refuge in the hills above Bantry Bay, I got down on my hands and knees to see what I could see. I must've heard a noise because I looked deeper into the limnal jaws of the underground maw.
As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw vermin, no, a little black fox, with matted fur, or at least I thought it was a fox. He was mangy and grubby but unafraid of my alien presence. Behind him I saw a buried Liliputian city, replete with Victorians painted yellow, orange and red, fiery, as if lit from within, in this underground cavern. It was night in that realm, streetlamps cast small pools of light on the pavements grey. Perhaps it was a reminder that this was a dream, not real.
The little fox was standing on a street corner, perhaps in another land, or another time. I no longer knew where I was, but I was growing frightened. This much I knew: the burrow was the gates to the Otherworld. To enter the Otherworld was to never return to this realm, it was also the gateway to enchantment or death. Land to the west. Tír na nÓg. Perhaps. like Oisín, I would return to another century.
As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw vermin, no, a little black fox, with matted fur, or at least I thought it was a fox. He was mangy and grubby but unafraid of my alien presence. Behind him I saw a buried Liliputian city, replete with Victorians painted yellow, orange and red, fiery, as if lit from within, in this underground cavern. It was night in that realm, streetlamps cast small pools of light on the pavements grey. Perhaps it was a reminder that this was a dream, not real.
The little fox was standing on a street corner, perhaps in another land, or another time. I no longer knew where I was, but I was growing frightened. This much I knew: the burrow was the gates to the Otherworld. To enter the Otherworld was to never return to this realm, it was also the gateway to enchantment or death. Land to the west. Tír na nÓg. Perhaps. like Oisín, I would return to another century.
Sometimes in dreams, my dead mother comes to visit. Sometimes she is with my grandmother. It is always a tearful reunion, they can never stay long. And here I was, willingly crawling underground, still very much alive.
But like a changeling child, the little black fox kept beseeching me with his milk blue eyes and small whine, begging me to come to him into the cruachan, but I was afraid of his fleas, and imagined diseases.
But like a changeling child, the little black fox kept beseeching me with his milk blue eyes and small whine, begging me to come to him into the cruachan, but I was afraid of his fleas, and imagined diseases.
I thought of rabies and of the bubonic plague, the black death that killed many millions during the Middle Ages, they knew rats were somehow involved, they never dreamed it was the fleas.
I thought too of my grandmother's stories of the OweynagCat, the cave of the great Irish three-headed saber cat, in which case, I was right in the middle of some seriously dark Otherworld sidhe mojo, as Samhain was the feast night of the Great Cat. And this was Beltaine, the beginning of Hafgan's realm, the Annwn Welsh lord of summer. A time of stolen children and horses. At least I had enough sense to leave the rowan and whitehtorn unplucked.
But the young pup cowered and whimpered, wanting creature comfort. I realized that he was as lost and out of his element as I was, so I crawled into the burrow to comfort him. He gladly crept into my arms, licked my face and throat. Initiation by saliva. He whimpered with recognition and squirmed with joy. Who was this little fellow and why was he abandoned on the metaphorical mean streets of an underground city?
I realized that his unkempt appearance was not because of mange or disease, though I still feared his fleas, but because he was a puppy, not a fox, and that there were others of his kind, hiding in the alleys and back streets. He was a sentinel scout for his brothers. The litter came bounding forth, surrounding me with their joyous puppy energy.
I was gathering them in, comforting them, when I sensed another darker presence on my right, and I was looking into the ominous yellow eyes, not of a fox, but a wary long-haired dog, a dog unlike anything I'd ever seen. Surely not an Alsatian or a German shepherd guarding the gates of hell.
The dog's ink dark coat was longer, thicker, no distinctive saddle markings. Her head was narrower, her ears bigger, her snout longer. Perhaps she was a half-breed. No Cerebus, but there was something unkempt and uncivilized about her that I couldn't quite put my finger on.
I realized I was looking right into the eyes of a wild wolf mother and I was in her den. In her territory. I froze and we eyed it off. I backed away slowly, but the pups would have none of it. They bounded in my arms, pounced on me, pulled at the tie that held back my waist long hair with their milk teeth, and paraded it forth until I was bound up in a veiled tangle of my own hair, I was a selkie caught fast in the fisherman's net.
The mother wolf backed off her stance, lifted a front paw slightly, and sat, as if to acknowledge that I meant her babies no harm, and then she stiffly, or formally approached. I offered my curled right hand, palm down, for her to sniff. The tension crackled like static electricity.
I willed myself into calmness and looked down at the ground, not daring to make eye contact as I knew that would be perceived as a threat. My throat exposed, my hand, soft in supplication, I had to will the fear from my body and just be there, in timeless suspension. I focused on my breath. When I felt her cold nose on my hand, I knew that the danger was past and that I would live to see another day.
The loba returned to her young, sat down, with a ribbon of tongue lolling out, she began the endless task of bathing them, taking in their sour milk-odor, as they settled in for a long suckle. I retreated from their burrow and with that, I awoke to the heavy downpour of rain on the first day of May.
So much for bathing in the May morning dew.
Was it May Day, or maybe mayday but then I realized that I was true dreaming, that I had indeed traveled to another place and time. It was a dextrous right-handed dream, and in that moment I realized that in the face of death, the fear is something I make daily, of my own choosing.
And in that moment I realized also that the reason why my mother and grandmother were hovering in the wings of my dreams, was that they had come, not for me, but for their remaining daughters and sisters, my aunts—where the cancer blossoms inside them like a black rose.
I awoke to the urgent ringing of the phone—on the answering machine was the dark news no one wants to hear. The ravening wolf.
YouTube of Oweynagat, a journey into mother earth: still images of the entrance to the Otherworld, by Mike Croghan, with music by Afto Celt Sound System.
