The Gates of Annwn

In wintertime Wales, the gates of Annwn are open wide. The origin of the word Annwn, (ah-noon) sometimes found in its older form, Annwfyn, (anoo-vin) is disputed. It may mean ‘the deep,’ for it is often located below the earth or beneath the sea. Or it may derive from ande-dubnos, a common Gallo-Brithonic word that literally meant ‘underworld.’ It might mean the ‘in-world’ or even, the ‘un-world,’ a negative image of the place we call home.

Welsh tales and legends describe Annwn as a classical Celtic otherworld paradise. It is the abode of the goddess Rhiannon with her magical birds, which have the power to wake the dead and lull the living to sleep. A medieval text calls Morgen le Fay ‘Margen, dwywes o annwfyn’ – Morgen, Goddess of Annwn, suggesting Annwn and Avalon are one and the same place. King Arthur and a host of warriors once sailed there in his ship, Prydwen, in search of a wonder-working cauldron guarded by nine maidens. They found a dream-like landscape of faery castles glimmering with beauty and danger. None but seven returned from this voyage through ‘perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.’

Much could be written about Annwn, but in this post I want to share with you a few of the magical places in the Welsh landscape which are traditional entrances to this mysterious realm.

Pentre Ifan
Up on the hills above Cardigan Bay, the great cromlech of Pentre Ifan was once known as the womb of the goddess, Ceridwen. This is holy ground: framed by the pillar stones is Carn Ingli, the sacred Mount of Angels, while below, the dark and ancient woodland closes around the Druid’s Cave. An avenue of stones is thought to have once wound up to the cromlech, which back then would have been covered with earth, a rounded belly within which Druid neophytes, perhaps aided by an intoxicating brew, might have experienced initiation into the depths of Annwn.


Grassholm

 Caer Sidi, the ‘Faery Castle,’ one of the citadels of Annwn, has been associated with the small island of Gwales, the archaic name for Grassholm, which lies eight miles off the coast of Pembrokeshire. Well into the 19th century it was said to be populated by a host of faeries and to have an occasional habit of disappearing beneath the sea. The whole of this coastline is abundant in stories of the ‘Green Meadows of Enchantment’ or ‘Green Islands of the Faeries.’ This may have been because Grassholm is the most westerly point of Wales and also lies opposite the Preseli Hills, where it is believed the bluestones that went to build Stonehenge were quarried in the Neolithic era. Now it is a bird sanctuary on which it is forbidden to land – a temenos set apart for Rhiannon’s charges.

Ffynnone

The waterfall and pool of Ffynnone in the Cych Valley, also in Pembrokeshire, is a place where anything might happen – as once it did when Arawn, King of Annwn, irrupted out of the Underworld with his baying pack of red-eared, white hounds, in the story of Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed. Pwyll ended up going down to Annwn which he found to be a most delightful place:

"He approached the court and inside he could see sleeping quarters, halls and chambers and the most beautifully ornamented buildings anyone had seen…The hall was set in order and then he could see entering a warband and hosts – the most splendid and best equipped troop that anyone had ever seen; the queen was with them, the fairest woman anyone had ever seen, dressed in glittering gold brocaded garment…And they passed the time in food and drink, with songs and entertainment. Of all the courts he had seen on earth, this was the court best supplied with food and drink, gold vessels and royal treasures."

Llyn y Fan Fach

A young shepherd met a beautiful faery woman, one of the Gwragedd Annwn, or Ladies of the Lake, who arose from the dark waters of Llyn y Fan Fach in Carmarthenshire. He took her back to his home in the nearby village of Myddfai where they were wed, but she warned him that if he ever struck her three times, she would go back to her underwater kingdom. She bore him three sons, but over the years he thoughtlessly struck her three times, and so she returned forever to Annwn. But when her sons were grown, she taught them the healing powers of herbs, and they grew up to become the celebrated doctors known throughout medieval Wales as the Physicians of Myddfai. Descendants of this renowned family were still practicing medicine in the 18th century and there is at least one herbalist in Dyfed today who claims descent from the famous family.

Stackpole

It’s not often that men of the church spend time in Annwn, but this is what happened to Bishop Elidyr  of St Davids Cathedral in Pembrokeshire, according to the great medieval chronicler, Gerald of Wales. When the bishop was a little lad, he ran away from the monks who were constantly giving him beatings, and hid in a hollow bank by a stream near Stackpole in the southern part of the county. Before too long, two little men led him through an underground passage into a land of great beauty, yet where no sun or moon ever shone. After spending many seasons of delight here, Elidyr grew homesick and went home to visit his mother. But his mother’s eyes glinted with greed when he told her of the riches there. She asked him to bring her a gift of gold and so Elidyr returned with a golden ball belonging to the king’s son. As he crossed the threshold of his house, his foot stuck fast, and he fell, dropping the ball which was seized by two angry little men. He was never able to return to that land again.

Glas Llyn

One of the Welsh names for the faeries is Bendith y Mamau, the Blessing of the Mothers. In the green fields bordering the lake of Glas Llyn in North Wales, a shepherd called Meirig was tending his sheep when he came upon a slender faery woman dressing her baby. He saw that she had hardly anything to protect the child from the icy wind blowing over the lake, so he took off his shirt and gave it to her. The woman thanked him and vanished, but every night afterwards, the shepherd found a piece of silver placed in an old clog in his cabin. He became very wealthy, married a lovely girl, and together they enjoyed the nightly gifts of the faeries for the rest of their lives, as ‘Bendith y Mamau was poured down upon the family, and all their descendants.’

The Berwyn Mountains

These deep enfolded hills of northeast Wales are named for Gwyn ap Nudd, a faery King of Annwn. (Ber = bre = hill and Wyn = Gwyn.) Gwyn is a hunter who leads the great cavalcade of spirits through the skies on stormy winter nights to gather up the souls of the dead and lead them to their home beyond this world. Like Arawn, he too is accompanied by the Cwn Annwn, a pack of white hounds with red ears. His palace lies within one of the Berwyns: perhaps underneath the energetically powerful stone circle of Moel Ty Uchaf on a hill above Llandrillo.

Gwyn was invoked by Welsh seers when they wanted to enter the hidden realms of Annwn and consult the spirits for divination. According to a 14th century Latin manuscript against divination, these Welsh “soothsayers,” known as awenyddion would petition him with these words:

“Ad regem Eumenidium et reginam eius: Gwynn ap Nwdd qui es ultra in silvis pro amore concubine tue permitte nos venire domum.”

To the King of Spirits, and to his Queen: Gwyn ap Nudd, you who are yonder in the forest, for love of your mate, permit us to enter your dwelling.

If you would enter the Gates of Annwn, just be sure you know how to safely return!

Journey to some of the most magical places in Wales in 2012:
Visit Spirit of Wales: Land of Myth and Magic

Faeries and Berries

Back in Wales after summer travels, I was seized with an obsession to pick berries. Rather than staying inside to catch up with the mountains of email that demanded attention, I found myself, basket in hand, tramping through the lanes and coastal cliff paths, determined to fill them up with as many ripe blackberries, elderberries, sloes, wild damsons, hips, haws, and rowan berries as I could. The overt reason was to make jams and jellies, but since I don't even eat the sugary stuff, (I leave that to David) I was merely obeying the irresistible atavistic impulse to gather as much free food as possible before the glistening hedgerows turn into the khaki ranks of autumn's army.

Standing at the garden table up to my elbows in purple juice, beating off the wasps who have their own agenda when it comes to berries, I thought about the faery-lore of my bountiful hoard.

The spirit of the elder is an old woman, the Elder-Mother, who lives in the trunk of this bushy tree. In Ireland elder was regarded as highly sacred, and it was forbidden to break even one twig. But in Lincolnshire you could barter for wood from the “Old Lady” or “Old Girl” by saying: “Old Woman, give me some of thy wood and I will give thee some of mine when I grow into a tree.” If you bathe your eyes in the green juice of the wood, you will gain the second sight. And if you stand under an elder-tree at Samhain in Scotland, you can see the faery host riding by. Elderberries plucked on Midsummer’s Eve confer magical powers, but since they generally don't ripen until August, it's a safe bet that doesn't happen very often. 

Within the blackthorn tree lives the lunantishee, a thin, wiry old man with pointed ears, long teeth, arms and fingers – a personification of the sharp thorn itself. He will not allow a stick to be cut either on the 11th of May or November (the old Beltaine and Samhain dates.) To do so is bound to bring misfortune. The thorns also protect the white flowers in the spring, which ripen into the black sour sloes, an ancestor of our orchard plums. Blackthorn’s sister is the hawthorn, whom the Irish have always recognised as a faery tree. Hawthorns were often referred to as "gentle bushes" after the custom of not naming faeries directly out of respect. Solitary thorns were known as the faeries' trysting trees, as they frequently grow on barrows and tumps, or at crossroads –  typical "thin" places in the landscape. To sit beneath the hawthorn tree on Beltaine Eve pretty much guarantees a sight of the fairy cavalcade riding out into our world at this liminal time.

We don't hear much about the bramble faery who scatters her gleaming jewels throughout our hedgerows with such profligacy, but mothers used to warn their children not to eat any blackberries after Michelmas as the faeries had blighted them – which no doubt served to safeguard their offspring from the ills of eating mouldy berries. But rowan berries are said to be the food of the high faery race known as the Tuatha De Danaan in Ireland. In olden times anyone who ate one of these magical berries remained free of sickness. An old person who ate them became young again, and they bestowed unsurpassed beauty on any maiden. Despite its virtues, the rowan-tree faery is an unprepossessing fellow: thick-boned, large-nosed, crooked in the teeth, and with one red eye in a black face. It is said that the Welsh used to brew an excellent ale from the berries, the secret of which is sadly now lost. Herbalist John Evelyn seems to confirm this in his Sylva: or, A Discourse of Forest-Trees:"Ale and beer brewed with these berries, being ripe, is an incomparable drink, familiar in Wales, where this tree is reputed so sacred, that there is not a churchyard without one of them

planted in it..."

I ended up making pots and pots of jellies, both blackberry-apple and wild damson, sieved through muslin and hung over the bath for two days; hedgerow jam – a brilliant tangy concoction made from crab-apples, rose-hips,  a few rowan berries, sloes, blackberries and raspberries from the garden; and froze the rest for future crumbles and pies. 

I also left some outside on the doorstep for the faeries, as wise old Jill did in Walter de la Mare’s poem:

BERRIES

There was an old woman went blackberry picking

Along the hedges from Weep to Wicking. -

Half a pottle- no more she had got,

When out steps a Fairy from her green grot;

 And says, 'Well, Jill, Would 'ee pick mo?'

And Jill, she curtseys, and looks just so.

‘Be off,' says the Fairy, 'As quick as you can,

Over the meadows to the little green lane

That dips to the hayfields of Farmer Grimes:

I've berried those hedges a score of times;

Bushel on bushel I'll promise 'ee, Jill,

This side of supper if 'ee pick with a will.'

She glints very bright, and speaks her fair;

Then lo and behold! She had faded in air.

 Be sure Old Goodie she trots betimes

Over the meadows to Farmer Grimes.

And never was queen with jewelry rich

As those same hedges from twig to ditch;

Like Dutchmen's coffers, fruit, thorn, and flower -

They shone like William and Mary's bower.

And be sure Old Goodie went back to Weep,

So tired with her basket she scarce could creep.

 When she comes in the dusk to her cottage door,

There's Towser wagging as never before,

To see his Missus so glad to be

Come from her fruit-picking back to he.

As soon as next morning dawn was grey,

The pot on the hob was simmering away;

And all in a stew and a hugger-mugger

Towser and Jill a-boiling of sugar,

And the dark clear fruit that from Faerie came,

For syrup and jelly and blackberry jam.

Twelve jolly gallipots Jill put by;

And one little teeny one, one inch high;

And that she's hidden a good thumb deep,

Half way over from Wicking to Weep.

What the Druids Knew

Ask the wild bees what the Druids knew. - Fiona Macleod

Lammas is a time of many harvests, not least the golden bounty of the bees. The hidden valleys of West Wales have long been havens for bee-keeping.

The first name that this island bore,
before it was taken or settled; 

Myrddin's Enclosure.
And after it was taken and settled,
the Island of Honey.

We have our own three hives up by the pear trees, sheltered by the holly hedge. On sunny days our garden sounds like Yeats’ 'bee-loud glade.' 

On Sunday we collected the first honey of the year – the result of a miraculous alchemy in which bees turn the nectar of hundreds of flowers into sweet golden syrup.

In Scotland’s western isles, people once talked of 'the secret knowledge of the bees,' for these tiny creatures were thought to embody the ancient wisdom of the Druids.

So what did the Druids know? Bees have long been considered divine messengers from the gods. And until quite recently in the Highlands and Islands, people thought that, when in sleep, trance or death, the soul left the body in the form of a bee – a belief that has clear druidic origins. Druids were trained in the art of the ‘soul-flight,’ by which they could journey to the Otherworld for knowledge from the spirits. They would probably have endorsed the tenet beloved of the mystery schools of the Near East: Si sapis, sis apis! – If you would be wise, be a bee!

Perhaps they also carried forth the tradition of the Great Goddess, for bees, whose lives are organised entirely around a single queen, have been sacred to the Divine Feminine for thousands of years, in ancient civilizations from Babylon to Rome. Bees were revered for their ability to pollinate flowers and crops, increasing the abundance of the Earth. The cultivation of honey was regarded as a sacred charge carried out with great reverence and ritual for it was seen as a precious gift from the Mother herself.

In the classical world, priestesses of many aspects of the Divine Feminine, including Rhea, Cybele and Demeter, were called 'melissae', which means 'honey-bees', for they served the Goddess as Queen Bee. At the Ephesian temple of Artemis, the melissae were accompanied by castrated priests who represented male bees or drones. Aphrodite’s shrine on Mount Eryx was shaped like a honeycomb, considered by the Pythagoreans to be a symbol of her qualities of love and harmony, because of its perfect hexagonal shape.

Our honey bees were somnolent in the warmth of the mellow August sun, and did not protest when David removed the frames of honeycomb, heavy and bulging with honey, each cell meticulously capped and sealed with wax.

In Wales the bee was said to have been brought by the old sow-goddess, Hen Wen (the Old White One) who dropped three grains of wheat and three bees in the county of Gwent, which has since produced the best wheat and the best honey in the land.

In the Welsh tale of Culhwch and Olwen, the young hero must perform many impossible tasks before he can win the hand of the giant’s daughter, Olwen White-Track. One of these is to gather 'honey that is nine times sweeter than the honey of the virgin swarm, without scum or bees, to make bragget for the feast.' Bragget is a drink made from honey and spiced ale.

My job was to scrape the wax caps off the honeycomb to reveal the golden treasure within – a sticky business! Then David spun each frame in a cylindrical tank to extract the honey, and when it was full, we filtered it through a couple of sieves into a settling tank. The rich golden stream flowed out like a river.

In early Ireland, the Bards sang of Land-under-Wave, the Otherworld country of the gods, where

'Rivers pour forth a stream of honey
In the land of Manannán son of Lír.'

This was the land where Celtic warriors hoped to live when they had passed from this world, where they could feast, carouse, and drink unlimited quantities of mead. Mead, made from fermented honey, was the drink of heroes and kings: the royal hall of Tara was called the ‘mead-circling house.' But it was not only for the rich: An Irish hermit who lived in the woods celebrated his simple life among the swarms of bees, whom he called, 'the little musicians of the world.' Their symphonies entertained him while he drank his fill of honey-wine flavoured with hazel-nuts.

No mead for us, but jars of the sweet stuff for our breakfast toast – and hopefully, enough wax left over to make candles. This morning the waxy cappings were returned to the bees so that they could clean the honey off – food for them and clean wax for me. The rain came later this afternoon – a good time to bottle the filtered honey in glass jars.

Bees were considered so important to early Irish society that there were special bee laws designed to protect them, called  the 'bech bretha.' A 7th century holy woman called Gobnait, who founded a women's community in southwest Ireland, had a close relationship with bees and used their honey for healing illnesses and treating wounds. She was said to be one of three sisters who had power over fire, and is clearly a Christianised version of the triple fire-goddess, Brighid, with whom she shares the same feast-day in early February. 

When a band of thieves attempted to steal the community cattle, Gobnait let loose a swarm of bees on the rustlers and sent them fleeing in terror. At her shrine in Ballyvourney, Co. Cork, a statue depicts her standing on top of a hive, surrounded by bees.

Nowadays the bee population of North America and Europe is in serious decline, which is a disaster in the making for all our major crops which are dependent upon bees to pollinate them. Scientists are unable to pinpoint the reason, but suspects include the increase of commercial agriculture with its use of pesticides and destruction of wild plants and flowers for the bees’ forage. Also implicated are the mass transportation of colonies for commercial purposes, which creates stress for the bees and spreads disease. In fact, bees are an indicator species for the health of Mother Earth, and they are definitely giving us a dire warning about the way we are treating her.

To honor the Earth by giving back to the bees, you could join the many individuals and families who are taking up beekeeping in response to the current crisis. Or find some other ways to help, for instance:

• Leave an area of your garden wild so that plants can flourish for the benefit of the bees. In Scotland, this was called the 'gudeman’s croft,' the plot of land reserved for creatures of the wild, which included the faeries, or “good folk.”
  
• Create a wildflower meadow, or exchange formal flower beds and lawns for a profusion of flower varieties, especially early and late bloomers.
  
• Support small beekeepers by buying local honey and bee products such as beeswax candles and salves.
  
• Buy organic vegetables and fruit that have been raised without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and support organic farming in your area. 

 

A BLESSING ON THE HONEY AND A BLESSING ON THE BEES!

Freeing the Waters – Two Rediscovered Holy Wells of Wales

An age-old tradition links women with wells. In the ancient world sacred springs were regarded as the entrance to the Underworld where the spirits dwelled. Pilgrims visited them to receive oracular utterances from the priestess who was guardian of the shrine – a practice that was still alive not two hundred years ago in Cornwall.  A mediaeval Grail text tells us of the “Voices of the Wells,” which were silenced when the Well Maidens were defiled by an evil king and his followers. Because of this the Holy Grail was withdrawn from the kingdom and its blessings no longer poured freely out into our world. This last weekend I visited two wells in mid Wales that were once lost but recently found again. Strangely enough, the stories of their rediscovery all involve women.

Ffynnon Ffraid

Winding up through the Cambrian mountains in the hazy heat of early July, I went in search of one of the few holy wells in Wales dedicated to St Bridget.  The Irish holy woman who was once the Celtic goddess Brigit is known here as St. Ffraid (pronounced Fride), and a mediaeval Ffynnon Ffraid had been rediscovered not long ago by a woman living in a remote upland farm in these parts. According to tradition, when Bridget was young her duties involved milking cows and making butter in the hafod, the country people's summer home in the high pastures.

Brigit of the red kites,

Brigit of the moorland,

Brigit of the meadowsweet,

Brigit of the dragonflies . . .

The well was entirely unique in Wales, being covered by stones in the shape of a beehive, but was in a bad state of repair. Annwen Davies and her mother worked for years to get funding for its restoration, but in the end had to use their own savings to get the job done.

When I drew up into the farmyard, Annwen was not at home, but I found her mother in the kitchen, busy making cakes for her grandson. Warm, earthy, merry and kind, Jasmine Jones offered me lemonade and told me how she and her daughter had the devil’s own job to convince the authorities they had actually found an unrecorded holy well – and how gratifying it was to prove the 'experts' wrong. But that was in the past – now she is endlessly surprised and delighted at the visitors who have ever since been making their way up here from all over – even as far as Australia.

Jasmine led me through the yard past her collection of stone hedgehogs to the starlings’ nest in a nearby shed where the mother was feeding her gaping chicks. She told me of her sixteen feral cats, her ripening gooseberry bushes, and the time that the snoring in the chapel – which caused many a sidelong glance in the congregation – was finally traced to the barn owls roosting in the rafters. (“They’re the only fully Welsh-speaking, card-carrying Methodist owls in the county!”)

Brigit of the hafod,

Brigit of the creamery,

Brigit of the bakestone,

Brigit of the speckled bread . . .

 She apologised for her slow progress up to the well in the garden behind her daughter’s house – her knee had been bent when she was pinned down by a sheep and never the same since. But she had no trouble heaving away the iron safety gate from the entrance to the little well so that I could look inside. 

It was dim and quiet away from the glare of the sun on baled hay and the noise of the tractor down in the farmyard. The well looked as it must have done in the Middle Ages, covered with mosses and lichens and overhung by a dense thicket of hazel and wild roses. I had to crawl inside, but it was as black as night within. One sandaled foot encountered the shock of ice-cold water from which, unseen, I filled my bottle.

In the dark of the well-house no time exists. I wondered whether Bridget herself, as 7th century Celtic holy woman, ever walked up here from her Abbey of Llanfride, rumoured to have once stood on the coast of Cardigan Bay. Centuries later, perhaps a procession of white-robed monks of Strata Florida abbey paused here for refreshment en route to Bardsey, the Island of the Saints, or even over to Ireland where they owned land. And what of the bard who lived in the nearby house in the 18th century: Ieuan Brydydd Hir, one of the great classic poets of his time, whose tempestuous life led to him being ‘incorrigibly addicted’ to a drink much stronger than water, as Samuel Johnson observed.

Brigit of the beehives,

Brigit of the honeycomb,

Brigit of the scent of summer,

Brigit of the methyglyn . . .

I had hoped to spend some time at the well by myself in meditation, tuning into the spirit of the waters, but it felt like it was time to go. Anyway I had already realised that, in the person of Jasmine Jones, I may have met with Bridget in the flesh. For She has many faces and is well-known to abide where there is laughter and an open heart.

The Well in the Silent Grove

I could not leave this area without a visit to one of the most mysterious holy wells in Wales. Hidden deep within the forestry plantation on the mountain above the ruins of Strata Florida, it has no name, but may have been the “Well in the Silent Grove” described by minister and antiquarian, George Eyre Evans, in 1903:

“. . . Follow the lane as it wends its way up the valley, with Glasffrwd . . . babbling over its rocky course, on the right. Here you are at once in the heart of the country – ‘Alone with the Alone’ – the sky, water, mountains, trees, rocks and birds. The monks new (sic) well the value of this spot, here were – nay, still are – their wells of healing waters, – iron, sulphur, chalybeate – used with benefit by the natives to-day. What more truly romantic spot can be imagined or desired than that round ‘Ffynnon dyffryn tawel' the ‘Well of the silent grove’? Here . . . its cool waters still bubble forth, much as they did when pilgrims to the Abbey slacked (sic) their thirst at its welcome brink . . .”

Since the time of George Evans this beautiful area had been acquired by the Forestry Service who covered it with serried ranks of conifers under which nothing grows and where no birds sing – a different kind of silence. It wasn’t until the plantation was clear felled in the 1990s that the well came to light again, spotted by an archaeologist, Caroline Earwood, from an aerial photograph. It took her hours to reach it after scrambling up and down steep mountain slopes, fording the stream, and forging her way through dense rows of Sitka spruce. Yet someone must have known about it, for beside the well stood a brown Denby mug without a handle, holding a posy of flowers.

When I first moved to Wales I knew I must visit this well, which is not marked on any maps. My first attempt ended ignominiously with soaked, muddy legs and a thousand itchy midge bites! The second time I went there with an experienced dowser who had been once before and a woman who was legally blind. After hours of searching, it was the blind woman who found the well.

On Sunday I found the way marked by forestry poles. Newly-planted saplings of both conifers and deciduous trees were dotted about the valley, poking up above the grasses and purple foxgloves. The brush around the well had recently been cut but not cleared, so it was slimy with dead grass and weeds and its channels choked. I spent some time cleaning it up with only a stick and bare hands, throwing great gouts of mud and slime up onto the banks. In that quiet place I was ‘Alone with the Alone’ for hours, and the silence was only broken when I fished out a piece of bark that was blocking the pipe to the cistern and the voice of the well returned loud and clear and bright.

Solstice at the Source

By sun, by star, by sea, by stone,
Tread out the circles of the Grail . . .

Summer Solstice was a gem this year, all the more precious for dawning between days of relentless rainfall here in West Wales. Under the blue crystal dome of the sky, we set off for a walk on the Preseli hills, planning to walk six miles or so along the Golden Road, the route taken by Bronze Age traders to the Wicklow Hills, in search of Irish gold.

We reached Carn Meini (the Mound of Stones) after only a mile or so of uphill walking in a landscape of tussocky heather and wild bilberries, the grazing ground of a small herd of moorland ponies who did not seem to mind our presence. 

From this cluster of huge rocky outcroppings it has long been believed that as many as eighty enormous stones were transported to Salisbury Plain to become part of Stonehenge more than 4,000 years ago.

The great stones held us, would not let us go any further. So we stayed all afternoon while David took photos and I lay down in a grassy alcove, listening to the slow, somnolent voices of the half-hewn giants as they conversed with the wind blowing in over the Irish Sea.

Drifting in and out of sun-warmed dreams, at some point it occurred to me that this was the very day that hundreds of people were gathering at Stonehenge to celebrate the Solstice, encircling the very stones that were once rooted here. Once again, the unsolved mystery that has confounded archaeologists for years raised itself in my mind. How did they get there, some 140 miles away? There are simply no plausible answers. 

One theory is that glaciers took them. Yet comprehensive geological studies have shown no evidence for glaciation in Wessex that could have transported these rocks and left no other trace. Another is that they were dragged with rollers and sledges along the coast of Wales by sea and then overland to Stonehenge. But modern attempts to replicate this journey have ended in disaster with stones sinking into the sea. 

Could they have been levitated by supernatural means as some claim the Egyptian pyramids were? Perhaps this was what the 12^th century scribe Geoffrey of Monmouth had in mind when he described how Merlin magically brought the stones of Stonehenge to Salisbury Plain from Ireland, where they were known as The Giants’ Dance. Of these stones, Merlin says:

They are mystical stones, and of a medicinal virtue . . . (they) make baths in them, when they should be taken with any illness. For their method was to wash the stones, and put their sick into the water, which infallibly cured them. With the like success they cured wounds also, adding only the application of some herbs. There is not a stone there which has not some healing virtue.

Recently a team of archaeologists came up with evidence that they believe demonstrates early tribes did make pilgrimages to Stonehenge for the healing properties of its stones. 

 

Meanwhile, here we were, magnetised by the stones into spending several unplanned hours among the sleeping giants under a pulsating midsummer sun, and they only let us go when I remembered we were supposed to be heading down to the sea for a community gathering at 6 o’clock.

A cross-country drive through winding lanes took us to Abermawr beach, where we met friends from Brithdir Mawr, a longstanding community of folks who live in a cluster of Celtic-style round-houses beneath Carn Ingli, the Mount of Angels.

The evening began with a silent meditation walk through woods which were alive with faery energy on this night, one of the three ysprydnos, or Spirit Nights of the year (although in Wales this was usually celebrated in its Christianised form as St. John’s Eve on June 23rd.)

After a picnic feast on the beach we danced in a ring to the skirl of pipes and beat of drum, which must have excited a herd of cows in the neighbouring field, for they pawed the ground, snorting, and galloped wildly over the grass in imitation!

Later we sang the sun into the sea with drumbeat and chanting in woven harmonies until the fire provided the only light on the darkening beach by which to find our way home again.

Seeking Taliesin

A few days after the winter solstice, we drove up the coast to the Dyfi Valley looking for signs of the Welsh bard, Taliesin. Under a sky so clear and cold it looked like it might shatter into shards of blue ice, we made our way to the estuary where the river meets Cardigan Bay. This big bite taken out of Western Wales is the result of floods in ages past; beneath these waters lie the Cantre’r Gwaelod, the ‘Lowland Hundred.’ Some still hear the bells of the lost kingdom ringing below the waves. Twisted stumps of trees on the long sands reveal a half-petrified forest at certain low tides.

Here Taliesin was born, or rather reborn, according to legend. He had started out life as a simple peasant lad called Gwion, who lived around Bala Lake in North Wales. Little Gwion fell foul of the goddess Ceridwen when he drank three drops of Awen, or Inspiration, from her cauldron. The potion was not meant for him, but for her own son. She tried to destroy him in a furious shape-shifting battle in which he turned himself into a succession of animals and birds. At the last he became a grain of wheat, but Ceridwen became a black hen and swallowed him whole. Nine months later, she gave birth to him as a human child, and not having the heart to kill him, she cast him out to sea in a leather coracle. After hundreds of years, the coracle was washed up at the mouth of the Dyfi, and found by a fisherman who was astonished to find he had netted not a salmon, but a live and kicking baby boy, whose head was surrounded by the glow of holy inspiration. He called the child Taliesin, meaning ‘Radiant Brow.’

Gwion was reborn as Taliesin on Calen Mai, the first day of summer. Today there were no signs of birth. A bitter north-east wind blew down from Snowdonia, carving the sand dunes into frozen wave patterns. It was hard to imagine the purple orchids and helleborines that draw bees and butterflies to these hollows in July. The piping calls of wading birds were stilled by the hissing wind which drove wisps and eddies of sand like ghosts racing into the sea.

Later we drove up into the hills behind the hamlet of Tre Taliesin in search of the poet's grave. The burial cairn of Bedd Taliesin was actually built in the Bronze Age, thousands of years before the bard. We found it plundered and forlorn, yet the original dolmen was clear to see, its grey stone slabs stained red by the huge round ball of the setting sun. Perhaps this was not for the dead after all, but an initiation chamber, since the story is that a night spent up here could make you mad, dead, or a poet.

Among the tumbled stones, the now fading light picked out a strange object: a small white seashell in the shape of a perfect spiral. Taliesin may not ever have been buried here, but the shell spoke silently of the endless spiral of life, death and rebirth, as day turned to night and the year began anew.

A Pause in the River of Time

Wayside shrines are an important feature of many landscapes in countries as far apart as Japan, India and Ireland. They are usually designed to provide a place of contemplation, a break from the clamor and daily stresses of our goal-oriented lives, a portal opening into silence, a pause for prayer. Modern Western landscape planning has no time for this kind of window onto the eternal, but there are still ancient places of spiritual refuge for those who know where to look. Like pools in the riverbank of Time, they offer still waters amid the relentless onward flow of modern life.

I came across one of these a short while ago in South Wales, only a few miles out of the busy county town of Carmarthen. I was walking out of the village of Llansteffan down a path which led to the sandy estuary shore of the River Towy. On a warm but cloudy May morning, the path was bordered on one side with cool green ferns, their fronds interspersed with the glow of bluebells and the white stars of stitchwort. On the other side an old grey stone wall followed the path, with a small wooden green door set in it halfway down. There was something about the latch on this door that invited entry. It opened easily, giving way to stone steps that led steeply down into a tiny roofless chapel - roofless that is, unless you count the profusion of honeysuckle and wisteria that overhung the whole place.

A plaque on the wall identified it as the holy well of St. Anthony – Ffynnon Shon Antwn in the Welsh. St Anthony was a hermit who lived in the Egyptian desert for twenty years. He returned to civilization as a man of great wisdom and inspired others to live simple, ascetic lives in monastic communities. Celtic Christianity was highly influenced by his example, and the early Church was characterized by hermits and anchorites who lived in caves and forest settings in the wilds of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, often connected with a nearby monastery. Unlike the medieval abbeys of the Roman church, these were simply-fashioned huts of mud and wattle clustered around a central oratory used for prayer and devotions. It is likely that their way of life continued that of their predecessors, the Druids, with whom they had much in common.

A carving of St. Anthony stared out from the wall with a compelling gaze. Someone had placed wild flowers in his hand, in remembrance of his affinity for nature. I knelt by the well where white shells from the nearby beach had been cast. I found out later that the well used to be visited by those in search of healing, and in living memory has been used as a wishing well. A white quartz pebble, cast into the water, was said to guarantee your wish would be granted, so perhaps the white shells took the place of the quartz. I responded to the invitation of a small stone bench to sit and meditate for a while. My eyes were still closed when, about ten minutes later, I clearly heard a voice telling me to look up. When I obeyed, I saw the image of St. Anthony lit with a single ray of sunlight, suffused with immense beauty.

Foolishly, I wanted to hold on to the moment, and ran up the steps and out of the chapel to find my husband who had the camera. By the time I returned, even though it took less than a minute, the light was gone. I had allowed 21st century technology to invade this sacred space and had broken the spell.

The experience reminded me of the time I went to Nevern Church in Pembrokeshire, famous for its high carved Celtic cross, ogham stones and ancient yew trees. I had visited it as an awestruck pilgrim in my younger days when I couldn’t afford a car and had to walk through the woods and across fields, following the tracks of centuries of pilgrims before me. Eager to see this numinous place again now that I had moved to Wales, I decided to drive there after a visit to the laundromat in the nearby town of Newport. But somehow, arriving with a load of crumpled washing in the car spoilt the whole experience, turning it into a mundane stop in the middle of a busy day, because I had not slowed down enough to access the inner state of mind so essential for visiting holy ground.

Wayside shrines are gateways inviting us to enter into a timeless experience of the sacred – but only if we slow down and open up to our own inner landscape first.