For Gwyn on Midsummer’s Day
If You had a grass it would be Yorkshire Fog.
From Your sleep of death,
from Your dreams,
come
see it
through my eyes.
Let us be one this Midsummer day
as I walk at night with you through Annwn.
I will speak not of Yorkshire or Lancashire,
roses or dragons red and white,
of the battles we each
must face.
Your Fog
is wiser than
these worries like grassheads,
here one day and then gone the next.
I shall follow
the threads of her hair –
her hair is verdant.
I shall follow
the bats to her lair –
my Lady Verdant.
I shall follow
the ancient pathways
to Peneverdant.
I shall meet her
there ivies in my hair –
my Lady Verdant.
*A poem and image for Anrhuna, the goddess who I believe to be the mother of my patron god, Gwyn ap Nudd, appearing in her localised form as the Lady of Peneverdant.
This is an image of Anrhuna in her guise as ‘the Mother of the Moss’ through which she has been speaking strongly to me over the past year. Anrhuna is not known from Brythonic lore but has presented herself to me and a couple of other awenyddion as an ancient goddess, who is the mother of my patron god, Gwyn ap Nudd. It’s my intuition that she was the driving force behind the earliest colonisation of the land by mosses.
For three days
she journeyed there
and for three days
journeyed back
to return a lost son
to return a lost brother
and I alone stand witness
at the standing stone
that might have been
placed here for this day
as his golden rays shine
over the marshland.
How did she win him
back from Winter’s King?
That is for her alone to know
and the birds who sing.
This poem is a follow up of my poem ‘I light a candle for Epona‘ based on the journey of the Great Mare to the Otherworld to win back her lost son. I linked this to my brother’s period of hospitalisation. I’m glad to say he is back now and on the road to recovery so many thanks to the mare goddess and to those who sent good wishes and lit candles.
The photographs are of the sun beginning to set over the winter solstice stone at the stone circle at Brockholes Nature Reserve and over the visitor village and Meadow Lake.
for Epona
to light the way
through the darkness.
I walk through the darkness too
with all the mothers
who have lost their sons
with all the sisters
who have lost their brothers.
We flit like bats against the walls.
We are searching
for our oldest animals
to lead us through the darkness
to the prison of the child
now a young man.
On the solstice
when the sun stands still
by candlelight
we will bring him back.
Today, December the 18th, is the festival of Epona, the Great Mare. Over the past few years the story of the search of the Mare Goddess for her lost son has been revealed to me as a relief of Epona riding through the Otherworld with engravings of animals, Rhiannon’s loss of Pryderi, and Modron’s loss of Mabon have sealed into one.
It’s my personal belief the episode in Culhwch ac Olwen featuring the search of Arthur and his men for Mabon with the help of the Oldest Animals and his rescue from the House of Stone replaced an earlier version in which the Great Mare (Epona) / Great Queen (Rigantona) / Great Mother (Matrona) searched for her son and rescued him from Annwn, where he was taken by his father, Annwn’s King. A similar story is told in the modern film, Labyrinth, where Sarah rescues her brother from the Goblin King.
It has taken on a personal meaning for me this year because, at the beginning of the month, my brother was admitted to hospital for brain surgery. It went well and he came back home to stay with me and my parents to recover, but was readmitted due to complications. We are hoping he will be returning from the hospital, a liminal place like the House of Stone that was Mabon’s Annuvian prison, between sickness and health, life and death, some time after his reassessment on the winter solstice.
I.
The fall of tempered leaves
stamps itself out mid-November
like leaf-shaped arrow heads
the yellow birch my old daggers
distant memories of the ancestors
contort the gloaming wearing
cloaks as grey as your shroud
and the grey spider who hangs
above watching you departing from
the darkness without a thread.
II.
I cannot imagine you Great Queen
as the young girl who was taken
against her will when the last leaf
fell by the hunter with the horns
and the ember-eyes headlight bright
before there were cars and cars and cars…
before with the leaves the forest fell…
before Annwn was known as Hell.
III.
You always knew where you were going
didn’t you? Needed no thread to lead
you back to your own home in his arms?
They knew that too – our ancestors
who offered up coins minted like leaves
in fairyland where money grows on trees
and crumbles likes us to grey dust.
IV.
I have no coin the leaves in my pockets
are old and withered as grey spiders.
When my fingers are dust I shall
follow without a thread shrugging into
your shroud joining the contours
of the grey-cloaked ever-marching dead.
Creiddylad,
strings of birdsong
pull your hair.
Creiddylad,
they turn your head
towards the sun.
Creiddylad,
your face is a gently
opening petal.
Creiddylad,
your footsteps call
the flowers from sleep
in hill and mound
and dun.
Creiddylad,
you are unstoppable
in your majesty
although a part of you is weeping inside
for the love of winter
who will soon
be gone.
Creiddylad,
do not turn back,
do not turn
back
to the darkness
of Annwn.
Creiddylad,
step into the light
of the spring sun.
As a symbol of my of lifetime dedication to Gwyn ap Nudd I commissioned this beautiful silver pendant from Emily Brunner. The image is based on Gwyn’s appearance as a ‘Bull of Conflict’ in the medieval Welsh poem ‘The Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’: ‘I come from battle and conflict / With a shield in my hand; / Broken is the helmet / By the pushing of spears.’ Emily was inspired to craft it in the style of Iron Age metalwork and the addition of the two Cwn Annwn ‘Hounds of Annwn’ (who mirror my guides) was her idea. She was a pleasure to work with and I am immensely proud of the outcome. Putting it on for my morning and evening devotions to Gwyn makes me very happy.
When the full moon was dark
on a night of deep magic
when the skies were haunted
by hunting calls of owls
beneath the branches
of the leaning yew
I made my lifelong vows
to Gwyn ap Nudd.
The Sanctuary of Vindos 