It’s mid-August. Lúnasa. The New Moon is on Wednesday morning and as I write, late on Saturday night, the Perseid meteor shower is peaking overhead. Of course, it is cloudy here, as it has been since late June.
The Romans believed this annual display to be a god blessing the fields with the fertility of his seed. In Catholicism they are the tears of St. Lawrence, and the Ancient Greeks believed the meteors to be the children of the hero Perseus and his wife Andromeda. We don’t know what the belief was for the Ancient Celts, but they have remained an annual event in the Northern Hemisphere coinciding with the first harvests and their celebrations for many thousands of years. Keep a look out on clear nights for another ten days or so as they will continue until late in the month.
With the upcoming New Moon, it is time for this month’s Writing Down the Weeds, my writing project bringing you the folklore of a seasonal, native flower or plant and a short story inspired by that lore. August in Ireland means the hills and boglands are cloaked in purple, the Heather in full bloom, and so today’s post is all about this hardy, versatile, evocative plant.
The short story which follows, whilst it includes some of the heather folklore, concentrates on its bogland habitat and leans heavily on the folklore of these liminal, ancient places. It is dark and sodden, a woman alone with the Bog. Let me know how it lands with you?
This newsletter is a place for me to experiment with stories and sharpen my words, it is a place to practice letting those words out into the world after keeping them in notebooks, drawers, and hard drives for most of my life. Your feedback is greatly appreciated and as always, your support is invaluable as I attempt to carve out a path ahead. Thank you for being here with me, I hope you enjoy today’s folklore and the tale.
Heather
Fraoch Mór
Calluna vulgaris
Flowering season: late summer- early autumn.
Habitat: bog land, mountain sides, heaths and moors.
A Country Kerry saying equates heather with poor land and poverty; “Gold under furze, silver under rushes and famine under heather” another saying from the same county states “Furze is the son of a king, heather the son of a lout.”
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