March in Ireland. The days have been calm and still, a washed out grey. The days have been high winds and climbing sunshine. Mid-week the wind blew through the harbour with such force the rigging screamed like a Hollywood Banshee in broad daylight. By night the aroura dances across the sky, mostly behind cloud cover. Today as I write all is grey again, but the birds are nesting, one sings even by night in the budding willows. The blackthorn is blooming along the hedgerows, pale and delicate white on the leafless branches and there is frogspawn in the still waters of the woods. Spring is on the breeze. And yet everywhere, everywhere the world is on fire.
Today as I write my candle has snuffed itself out in the cold of the house and I have another fever; I hope you will forgive me if it reads like it…
By the time this publishes on Sunday morning March’s Moon will be newly waxing, just on the turn from dark to light. Turn the coins in your pocket when you first see her early in the week, so they grow as she does. Plant your seeds, physical and metaphorical; what do you wish to grow with the budding spring?
Below, for that New Moon is this month’s Writing Down the Weeds. It is of Comfrey, both lore and fiction. But first, Friday brought International Women’s Day and today, Sunday, is Mother’s Day here. And so today I offer up a prayer for all mná (women as Gaeilge), all Máithreacha (mother’s), all Seanmháthair (Grandmothers as Gaeilge, literally “old mothers”) across this sacred, beleaguered, embattled earth. I call my ancestors to my back, freedom fighters all, Maude, and Maeve in equal measure.[1] I beg pardon from the old goddesses should they remain, somewhere in ear-shot near world’s end.[2] I gather my sisters, brave and fiercely awake, lightning conductors of truth and beauty, freedom-fighters all the same, I gather them to the circle round.[3] We hold the line. I offer up my prayers, my holy screams, and most sacred dreams to the women of Palestine, the centre holding through their strength alone. I offer up my prayers to every woman who has ever had to tightrope walk through shattered dishes, angry hands, and wearing words in a home that should have been safe. I offer my prayers to every woman who has walked through the portal of motherhood, be she with a child in her arms or with the gods. I pray in fury for every woman whose body has not been treated as the sacred altar of worship it is. I offer my prayers to the grandmothers who braid our lives together and tend the tales. All mná, all, all. I pray for love and for freedom. Grá agus Saoirse. For all.
Below is Comfrey, herb of Brigid, herb of healing, of mother’s milk. First the folklore and then a piece of flash fiction (800 words) inspired by it. It is the same character you’ve encountered here so many times before, as I wrote before she is insistent when I sit down to these pieces, and she’s been present here for a year now.[4]
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[1] Maude Gonne was a republican revolutionary active during Ireland’s as yet unfinished fight for freedom in the early twentieth century, Yeats disparaged that she “hurled the little streets upon the great”. Maeve was a warrior Queen featured heavily in The Táin, part of the Ulster Tale Cycle.
[2] I’m paraphrasing Yeats again; “Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain/ Somewhere in ear-shot for the story’s end,”
[3] Many of them are in this space, Sylvia, Kerri, Ciara, Ramona, Lorna.
[4] For more of her see: Crow, Witch’s Thimble, Herb. Wyrt. Moon., Of Brambles and Blackberries, Song, Darkest Depths and a Mourning Moon, Gorse, Whiskey.
Comfrey
Latin: Symphytum officinale
Irish: Compar, Lus na gcnámh mbriste (plant of the broken bone)
Common English: Knitbone, Boneset
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