A Note Between Moons

And a local folktale for these darkening nights

Late October, in Ireland. It’s been weeks since I’ve written here, almost a full cycle of the moon. Again. We were on the beach for both the new and the full moons, watching for the lighthouses, bats and stars overhead. The days have swung between low golden light, shining dappled and honeyed through the rooms, the leaves of our oak in the warm hues of autumn outside the windows, to stormy and grey. Winds screaming through the rigging in the harbour like a Hollywood banshee and waves pummelling the shoreline, leaving a saffron froth in its wake.

We are a week in our new house now. The move was chaotic, to say the least. Moving boxes and furniture from four locations, mostly solo, with a near-five-year-old in tow. On the first night, surrounded by boxes I made sure to light the fire. And suddenly, surprisingly, we were home. My boy has slept sound in his own bed, alone in his room, all night through since we got here, he feels safe and contented. I do too. This house and this town have wrapped themselves around us, welcomed us in. We are held, we are safe. We are home.

The relief and the privilege in that is beyond what I can adequately convey. We are almost entirely unpacked, just a couple of boxes to go. I am still without my books though, the library shelves still to be built but the dust is settling, figuratively and literally. Builders dust that gets into every nook and cranny, grey and gritty and hard to shift. I clean it and weep for those mothers who rock their murdered children, covered in the dust that comes from throwing bombs at buildings. Construction dust, it has a particular smell, and feel, and when I see the videos, live-streamed horror, I feel it viscerally. This past year has changed me. I have the peaceful privilege of simply cleaning this dust from a safe home, but even in that domestic act my heart is shattered by the association of it in my reeling mind.

I have become disillusioned and disgusted at our “protests”, at best they are toothless, at worst they are performative or a party. For over a year we have taken to the streets and no change has come, because we have become too complacent, too tamed. They have filed our teeth and took our claws, the ruling classes, the capitalist “elite”. A protest is supposed to be a demonstration of strength, we are supposed to take to the streets to say, “we are many, and you are few, hear us and bend to OUR will or we will burn it down, we will dust off the chopping block and sharpen the axe, hear us or pay the price!” But instead, we shout, and they safely ignore us. They can ignore us because we go quietly home, to our relative comfort and safety. We (and I use we as the collective here) are too tamed, too afraid that comfort will be taken from us if we step too far out of line. And they are drawing the lines ever tighter around us. I of course include myself in this. I’ve wrestled with myself regarding where my lines would be, what would it take for me to set fire to what I know needs to burn? More people with matches in their hands too? So many that they couldn’t punish us all? If I had nothing to lose, my child, my home, my comfort? And what comfort will I have if I do not stop it before it devours us all? What will my son have for a life if this is allowed to continue? When will they come for us? And will I find my teeth then? We all like to think we would, that we’d stand up and fight, but too few of us have, out here on this safe, tamed, privileged outer edge. We have contented ourselves that our “protest” is fight enough and it is increasingly clear that it is not. I have no answers, save that what we are doing is not enough, we are living concurrent with mass genocide and ecocide, and it will soon be knocking on all our doors. We need to root down, we need to build community now, build skills. We need to get strong boots and more matches.

Today is just a note between the moons, the Elderberry (there’s still some left if you know where to look) lore will be with you in the coming days and a local ghost story should be in your inbox before Samhain. Today I’ll leave you with an ancient Irish tale befitting my troubled mind, one of a bloodthirsty ruler and the warrior sent to kill him. I posted it last year and yearly it becomes more popular, I first wrote of it six years ago after a series of strange coincidences and a hefty dose of intuition lead a good friend and I to the grave site of Ireland’s Vampire Chieftain, Abhartach.

Below that again you’ll find a short video of last week’s full moon from the beach. Turn your sound up for a moment of calm.

Abhartach

A few miles west of Garvagh, County Derry in the area of Glenullin, and townland of Slaughtaverty, stands a lone Hawthorn in a field, atop a hill, a large quarried stone lies at its base. So far so normal, at least for us Irish. Our rural areas are dotted with Fairy Thorns, but this is no mere fairy site, this particular tree and its long flat stone is said to mark the grave of the Chieftain Abhartach.

Folklore tells us that Abhartach lived, and importantly for the story, died in the 5th or 6th century C.E. Accounts vary, some say he was deformed, some say he was a dwarf, but all agree he was a powerful and evil magician. He was a possessive and jealous man and suspecting his wife of having an affair he designed to climb outside her bedroom window to catch her in the act. However, he slipped and fell to his death. He was buried in a manner befitting a chieftain, standing upright. Yet the following day, come dusk Abhartach had returned, demanding each of his subjects let blood from their wrists into a bowl for him to drink. He instructed that this gruesome meal be prepared for him daily, and terrified of his evil the people fed him their blood, sustaining his unnatural life as one of the marbh bheo, the living dead. Soon his subjects grew weary of living in fear but none amongst them were brave enough to attempt an assassination and so they asked the warrior chieftain Cathán (now O’Kane) to slay Abhartach for them.

Cathán killed the evil chieftain and again buried him standing in his grave. The next day however Abhartach had returned, in a foul mood and demanding more blood. The terrified people recalled the warrior, he again dispatched their king and returned him to his grave. But the next day, as the shadows grew dense, he returned once more, now in a rage and craving more blood. Cathán was at a loss, the man had died three times; twice by his own hand and he’d put him in the ground himself, so he asked the local Druid (some tales tell of a local saint but in early Irish Christianity the lines between our ancient paganism and the new religion are incredibly blurred. There is however a local ‘saint’s track’ and holy well attributed to St.Eoghan or John, yet it is certain this would have been a pagan site long before Christianity took hold). The wise man informed the perplexed warrior that to kill the undead chieftain he must be slain with a sword made of yew wood, buried upside down, feet towards the sky and a large stone placed on top of the grave to help hinder his resurrection. The stone was then to be surrounded by branches of sacred Irish trees such as hawthorn and rowan. The druid gave a grave warning that should the stone ever be removed Abhartach would be free to walk amongst us once more. No less puzzled Cathán carried out the holy man’s orders and the people were finally rid of their undead ruler. The twigs grew into a thorn tree and a huge dolmen was built upon the site so no one would forget what lay there and unwittingly release him. However now only one stone and the tree remain.

The folktale was collected in the late 1800’s by the Folklorist and historian Patrick Weston Joyce and would have certainly been in circulation in Dublin whilst Bram Stoker was a civil servant there. Additionally, the Irish term droch fhola meaning bad blood bears more than a passing resemblance to Dracula. I’ve always said we Irish invented Tall, Dark and Moody, just spend a little time with our men…

If local lore is to be believed the land is still considered bad ground and when an attempt was made to clear the site just over twenty years ago the chainsaw brought to cut down the tree broke down three times and the chain wrapped around the stone to remove it snapped cutting the hand of one of the workers and allowing blood to seep into the ground. No more attempts have been made.

The site is not signposted, it’s private land and is tricky enough to find, although we had a lot of luck, so head to Garvagh to try yours this Samhain season.

Grá agus Saoirse

Siobhán