It’s early June. The light stretches until eleven pm this far north, dawn starts slowly each morning before four. Less than five hours of darkness and we’re still almost three weeks from the solstice. And as I write the moon is full in a completely clear sky, so it is constantly light. I’m exhausted with it. We all are. It is too bright, too hot and sticky to sleep, when I do my dreams come vivid and restless. But we revel in it none the less.
Everything is green and abundant; the hedgerows are spilling out onto the back roads and the flowers are in full, decadent bloom. We’re back in County Antrim, my boy and I, where the roses and honeysuckle tumble outside the window where I keep my desk and the sunsets pour golden for hours. The night is pink and lilac around the edges and I’m out in the garden at twilight when my boy sleeps and Venus appears bright in the western sky.
June’s full moon (peaking at five am on Sunday 4th June here in Ireland) is one that has slipped into our everyday experience, it is where the term Honeymoon comes from. These heady, sultry days leading up to mid-summer traditionally hosted many couples in the first blush of marriage, and so the name for the moon, the name for the month, as our ancestors’ calendars ran from moon to moon, became the name for those romantic, easy days at the beginning of things. Indeed, the old superstition states that any marriage beginning on a full moon in June will last a lifetime.
But it is also nearing the ending of things, of a cycle anyway. In a few short weeks we will tip into what the Celts described as the dark half of the year, as the sun begins its descent back towards the shortest day at the winter solstice. One of the Celtic/Anglo-Saxon names for this Moon, ‘Dyan’ meaning ‘pair’ speaks to this duality.
The other local names for June’s full moon are Mead, linked to the honey mentioned above, Horse as it is foaling season and Rose, as they are currently in bloom, infusing gardens and hedgerows with their heady perfume.
It is from these names I bring you todays story offerings. Three pieces of flash fiction, three starts of tales. Each deal with dualities; summer and winter, dark and light, loss, and abundance. Each feature pairs; lovers or twins. They are all infused with that golden light and the hot days we have been enjoying as we head towards summers height.
The first is of the meadow, of honey and flowers and is full of loss and life-giving love.
The second is of horses, based on the horse goddess Macha. A sovereignty goddess whose love and consent to share her bed chose a local king. The myth tells that due to her husband’s bragging she was summoned and forced to race another kings’ horses whilst heavily pregnant with twins. She won the race but died in labour on the finish line and with her last breath she cursed the men of Ulster to suffer with the pains of childbirth when they were most needed in battle. Thus, setting the scene for Cú Chulainn to defend Ulster alone in the famous myth cycle of The Táin. I’m writing of Ulster’s infamous hound for my story collection, so it has been interesting to explore Macha’s part in the myth with this moon.
The third and final tale I offer to you this moon is of roses. Ideas of roses and duality, summer and winter, lead me easily to a fairy tale I have had resting on my desk to work with for almost a decade now. Snow White, Rose Red. This tale is a literary one, written by one of the Brothers Grimm, rather than one coming from the oral tradition, although it has many motifs from the earlier tales. And it has been a constant in an ongoing conversation regarding fairy tales between the incomparable Sylvia Linsteadt of The Pollen Basket, and I for months.
Snow White, Rose Red tells of two sisters, one fair, one dark, one timid and good, the other wild and unruly, night and day. They live with their mother on the edge of the woods. One night a knock at the door brings a bear into their midst. They, being children in Grimm’s tale use him as a climbing frame, a playmate, but the curious rhyme Snow White, Rosie Red would you beat your lover dead? gives us a glimpse of perhaps more adult intent. The sisters consistently rescue a tiresome dwarf from trouble of his own making only for the bear to strike him dead when he threatens them. The bear as it turns out is a prince under the dwarf’s curse, the curse is broken, and he marries Snow White. Rose Red marries his brother, and they all live happily ever after, as it goes. It is a tale in the Animal Bridegroom classification, but under the typical moralistic telling of Grimm.
Bears died out in Ireland around five hundred years before the Celts arrived, so they do not feature in our mythology or folktales as they do in most northern countries.
My boy and I recently visited Wild Ireland, an animal sanctuary not far from Derry just across into County Donegal. There they have bears. They were asleep when we first passed their enclosure but later, as I stood beside the Irish Hare showing it to my boy, I saw movement through the trees. The habitat there is one I’m very used to, silver birch trees, heather, bracken, and rush, and amongst it all (behind a barely visible fence) stood a huge brown bear, tall on his hind legs. Seeing it in terrain I know intimately ignited something ancient in my brain. I’m still processing the encounter.
My rewrite here incorporates both sisters into one, alongside the Snow White of the more widely known tale, Briar Rose, and a Little Red Riding Hood for good measure. It is Sleeping Beauty behind her hedge of thorns, Arthur, the Bear King of the Celts across the sea, asleep in the hill. It is a love story, slow and easy, a honeyed moon in the lingering light.
If you enjoy them, please, as always, let me know. Xx
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