from one thousand battlefields where in the dreamtime He still gathers the dead.
He is alive. They are dead. They will not return.
I think of all the widows and what a gift it is to be married to an undying God
who comes in the old armour and military garments
of all the ages who have fought
and the funereal attire, black coats, blacker hats…
of all the ages who have wept.
My only tears are tears of happiness and my laughter is the laughter of the fair folk who for once didn’t laugh at our wedding.
His only tear carries the memories of the astonishing and today it is for the many and for me alone.
A poem celebrating the twelfth anniversary of my meeting with Gwyn ap Nudd at the Leaning Yew. At this time of year He returns from His sleep in the Castle of Cold Stone for Mis Medi ‘The Reaping Month’ (September). It is the first time I have celebrated our meeting and His return since our spiritual marriage.
‘Didst thou ever see men of better equipment than those in red and blue?’ ~ The Life of St Collen
In the House of my Heart the red and blue people dance, in the chambers they are transformed.
In my right atrium a blue woman arrives with a herd of blue cattle with blue lips, blue tongues, they are mooing, sad and sorrowful, she speaks their names: Blue Anxious One, Blue Doldrums, Blue Depression, Hornless Blue. Other cowherds, horseherds come, boys and girls with hounds who are yappy or listless and mysterious people in the best of equipment red and blue lead them into the next chamber.
In my right ventricle the cattle are fed and bedded down on straw that looks and feels like water, the horses are put out to pasture and the hounds are given a sausage or two. It’s alright to feel old here, it’s alright to fall asleep. It’s alright to have long grey hair and knots in your beard even if you’re a woman because the one who awaits you accepts the coming of all souls no matter how weary in imperfection drawn in daze, in trance, to their transformation by the people equipped in blue and red
to where my lungs transform every sorrow in the tiny chambers of the alveoli – in every one there is a king who has a cauldron who resides over a feast where people in red and blue dance and this place is also the Heart of my Heart.
In my left ventricle they are reborn as tender calves, as wobbly-legged foals, as newborn pups snuggled together. They are fed and nurtured by the people in red and blue and fed on milk with a touch of mead and quickly they grow.
From my left atrium they come stampeding forth – all the cattle with their cow bells ringing with names like Red Joy and Red Passion and Red Horned and Red Creative One. All the horses shaking their red manes swishing their red tails. All the hounds outrunning their young whippers-in. The people in blue and red cheer them on.
They are the arrows from the bow of the Hunter in the Heart of my Heart, the sound of the blood in my veins rushing from death to birth to death and back to birth again.
This poem was inspired by Saint Mechtilde’s descriptions of visiting the House of the Heart and by my introduction to journeying into my body with my spiritual mentor, Jayne Johnson, a practice she learnt from Arnold Mindell, author of The Shaman’s Body and Working with the Dreaming Body. These two elements have helped me deepen my understanding of how my heart is now one with the Sacred Heart of Gwyn and He now resides there.
‘At the head of the line… the spoil was the cow of An(r)hun(a).’ ~ The Battle of the Trees
I am the Cosmic Cow.
I am white and red with seven legs, eleven udders pouring the whitest milk, a red crown of twelve stars upon my head.
My cow bells sound through the sea of stars. My milk is the origin of the Milky Way.
I am ever loving and ever giving.
You cannot capture me because I always come willingly.
You cannot take my milk because I am always pleased to give.
Milk me until your fingers are bare bone and my milk will never run dry, not until you have used every bucket in the world and you have emptied every mine.
I am ever living and ever giving.
I can melt the heart of the cruelest warlord with one look from my soft eyes And halt the wars betwen nations with the scent of cud between my soft lips.
I am the spoil but I cannot be spoilt – white, blessed, holy am I.
‘The Battle of the Trees’, in The Book of Taliesin, records a conflict between the Children of Don and Arawn, King of Annwn, and His otherworldly monsters.*
We are told ‘At the head of the line / the spoil was the cow of Anhun’. The cow, as the spoil, is absolutely central to the battle but, unfortunately we find out nothing else about her. All we are told is, ‘It caused us no disaster’. This suggests the cow is a benevolent being but we find out nothing more.
Marged Haycock suggests that Anhun is St Anthony and this buch ‘cow’, ‘buck’, ‘buck-goat’ or ‘roebuck’ might be the satyr he met in the wilderness.
This didn’t feel quite right to me – I couldn’t see the Children of Don fighting over a satyr. For a long while I saw this animal as an Annuvian cow akin to the Brindled Ox, who was stolen in ‘The Spoils of Annwn, but could discern no more.
Then, a few months ago, I was sitting looking at the name ‘Anhun’ and saw a couple of spaces between the letters filled in by the name An(r)hun(a). This title means ‘Very Great’ and she is a found Goddess who myself and a number of other awenyddion have come to know as the Mother of Annwn and of its ruler, Gwyn. (It’s my personal belief Gwyn and Arawn are titles of the same God).
Anrhuna’s association and possible identification with a magical cow ties in with parallels from Irish mythology. Her Irish cognate is Boann or Bó Find, which might derive from the Proto-Celtic *Bou-vindā ‘White Cow’. She is the wife of Necthan (Nuada) who is cognate with Nodens / Nudd ‘Mist’ the father of Vindos / Gwyn ‘White’. *Bou-vindā fits with Her being the mother of Vindos.
Bo Find ‘White Cow’ and Her sisters Bo Rhuad ‘Red Cow’ and Bo Dhu ‘Black Cow’ came from the Western Sea to make barren Ireland green and fertile.
My personal gnosis around the Cow of Anrhuna presents her as a cosmic cow akin to Auðumbla ‘hornless cow rich in milk’ whose milk fed the primordial giant, Ymir, from whom the world was made in the Norse myths. Also to the sacred cow and bovine appearances of the Divine Mother, Kamadhenu, and the Earth Mother, Prithvi, in the Hindu religion.
Her loving and giving nature and endless supply of milk also link to later folklore. In the Welsh lore we find Gwartheg y Llyn, ‘Cows of the Lake’ who belong to the lake-dwelling Gwragedd Annwn ‘Wives of the Otherworld’. They are usually white or speckled / brindled and are captured for their milk and, on being mistreated or milked dry, disappear back to their lakes.
In England we find the legend of the Dun Cow who provides plentiful milk until a witch tricks her by milking her with a sieve not a pail and she dies of shock. There are two variants here in Lancashire. In one the dead cow’s rib is displayed at Dun Cow Rib Farm in Longridge. In a happier variant her milk saved the people from the plague and she was buried at Cow Hill in Grimsargh.
I now like to think these stories derive from a deeper myth featuring the Cow of Anrhuna. It also made me smile that the cattle of Annwn, likely the cow’s daughers, are associated with the Wives of Annwn after my marriage to Gwyn.
*Gwydion fashions the trees ‘by means of language and materials of the earth’. Lleu is the battle-leader, ‘Radiant his name, strong his hand, / brilliantly did he direct a host’. Peniarth MS 98B records how the battle was caused by Amaethon stealing a roebuck, a greyhound and a lapwing from Arawn. Arawn’s monsters include a black-forked toad, a beast with a hundred heads and a speckled crested snake.
I. Apple tree, sweet apple tree, who grows in my suburban garden, know I am no Myrddin and no prophet.
I fought not in the Battle of Arfderydd. I was not a golden-torqued warrior.
I wandered not in the Forest of Celyddon.
But I have wandered for thirty years with madness and madmen in the wildernesses of suburbia not knowing what is real and what is not.
I have known my pigs and my stolen berries and my maidens of the suburban drains, my Chwyfleian beneath her trap.
II. Apple tree, sweet apple tree, who grows close to my garden fence, know I am no Myrddin and no prophet.
I knew not Gwenddolau and his two eagles who feast on the flesh of the Britons every day but I have been devoured by death-eaters.
I did not get involved with the games of Gwenddolau and Rhydderch on the gwyddbwyll board, men gold and silver,
but I predicted the outcome and did not speak up about Caerlaverock.
I ask that my Lord of Hosts have mercy on me.
III. Apple tree, sweet apple tree, near where the birds come to feed, where the sparrows pick, the starlings peck, where the long-tailed tits come to twirl their tails, know I am no Myrddin and no prophet
yet I was torn out of myself
not after the Battle of Arfderydd but when I was but a child, a fledgling by the bullies who called me a pig, knowing not Myrddin’s sweet little one, when I was only half-pig half-bird.
I knew not what kind of bird.
Not a hawk certainly not a merlin.
Perhaps a blackbird or the big black bird perching on my chimney-top blotting out the sun.
IV. Apple tree, sweet apple tree, with your blossoms white and pink, foxglove pink, the colours of the fair folk, know I am no Myrddin and no prophet,
yet I was invited to walk not in Celyddon but in Avalon with my Lord of Hosts.
Oh happy happy days beneath your boughs with the long-tailed tits twirling, picking at the worms
as the snake returned to the garden and the Dragon King spread His wings and they were filled with the apples of the sun.
This poem is inspired by ‘The Apple Trees’ from The Black Book of Carmarthen wherein Myrddin Wyllt speaks his woes to an apple tree after the tragic Battle of Arfderydd. I believe ‘the Lord of Hosts’ referred to in this poem is Gwyn ap Nudd, who is also referred to as ‘the Lord of Hosts’ in ‘The Conversation of Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwyddno Garanhir’. Gwyn, ‘White’, has paradoxically appeared to me in the guise of a black dragon. It’s a poem about knowing in spite of my defects and limitations I am loved.
I chanted songs before the enchanter chanted this world into being from fire, air, earth, water, wind, mist, dew, from fruits, from an unknown frightful thing.
I know the chants that make corpses rot and bring the dead to life from the cold earth’s bones. I know the sleeping songs of stones.
My chants of transformation rival the formulae of mathematicians. I sing not numbers, sine, cosine, dark equations
but still I can launch an aeroplane or nuclear bomb. I can bring warplanes down from the skies and I can call a seedling to grow.
I make a mockery of all who claim to conquer the divinities of mountaintops and gyres with what you call my neanderthal tongue.
I am no songbird and I am certainly no homo sapiens. I know nothing of your guilt and depression, only the chants of Chanting Crow.
The Sanctuary of Vindos 