Midsummer Fires

As we've just had the Midsummer solstice, here is a poetic celebration of the many different customs of Midsummer. gleaned from Ronald Hutton's excellent book "The Stations of the Sun":

Midsummer Fires

In the Vale of Glamorgan, there I saw

A cart wheel all covered in straw

Set alight, then rolled downhill

Augur for harvest, good or ill

If out before it reaches the end

Poor harvests now bad weather send

If lighted all its fall, and still longer

Abundant crops will grow for farmer.

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At Buckfastleigh is lit upon on sunset

Midsummer wheel that luck may get

If guided by sticks, it meets the stream

Fortune will shine within its beam

A flaming chariot is shown in part

Bringing delight and joy to heart

As sun now wheeling through the sky

Brings living warmth to you and I.

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In Shopshire, upon St John's Eve

Three fires do they carefully weave

A bonfire of clean bones, no wood

Of wood, no bones, the wakefire should

Keep on burning through the night

Watched by all, for second sight

And lastly, made of wood and bones

St John's fire is lit upon old stones.

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At Penzance, tar barrels set on fire

With music played on harp or lyre

Folk walk this way, sing loud and raucous

Holding forth torches of blazing canvas

Then link hands, and dance in circle

"Threading the needle", rhythmical

Over the dying embers, fading light

As the evening falls to night.

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In Ireland, when fire dulls to reddish glow

Men leap over the flames in show

When lower still, young girls can leap

Thrice back and forth a man to keep

Married women walk upon the embers

Secure good will for family members

Then all take back within one hand

To their own house, a sacred brand.

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Midsummer Eve, and fires are lit

The solar nexus reaches summit

Spoked wheel pauses, then rolls on

We chant at equinox in antiphon

Lay out the candles for spectacle

In pattern of five, a pentacle

Of customs old, and customs now

Upon the Ancient Burial How.

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Book of the post:

Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Paperback)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stations-Sun-History-Ritual-Britain/dp/0192854488

Review of Ronald Hutton in Independent

The Druids: A History, by Ronald Hutton

White robes, mistletoe, and heroes from ancient times to the present day

Reviewed by David V Barrett

Published: 21 June 2007

With his relaxed style and his refreshing insights into the historical origins of modern pagan beliefs, Ronald Hutton is one of the most recognised historians on British television. He has also become something of an iconoclast, tearing up what we thought we knew, and emphasising that all history is interpretation: who is telling the story, when, and why, obviously affects the content: what we call "history".

So what do we know as fact about the Druids? Almost nothing, because the few Roman sources are very questionable. Recent scholarship on Tacitus reveals that his work "represents beliefs, rather than recording reality". The evidence for the Druids as early British heroes, or even for their existence in Britain at the time of the Roman conquest, "consists of a molehill of completely unreliable material. On this a mountain of literature was to be built."

In this detailed but readable and in places hugely entertaining study, Hutton explores the many perceptions of the Druids; as patriotic heroes, as men of wisdom, as people close to nature.

Popular belief is often out of step with scholarly opinion; the idea that the Druids built Stonehenge was dismissed by scholars from the mid-19th century, but books were still promulgating this myth in the 1950s. They were also repeating one of the strangest beliefs, "that Druids had been bearers of the true patriarchal religion of the ancient Hebrews". In contrast, Victorian poetry and 20th-century popular fiction portrayed Druids performing bloody sacrifices.

Hutton challenges both popular and scholarly beliefs. He argues that Lindow Man, found in a Cheshire peat bog in 1984, may not have been a human sacrifice as claimed; and that the 1945 find of metal objects and bones in Anglesey is evidence neither for "a cruel and bloody religion" nor even for Anglesey being a centre of Druid activity.

Today's Druids are very different from all the supposedly historical stereotypes. Some, dating from the 18th century, are fraternal societies. Others embrace a variety of spiritual ideals. Hutton charts the long and uneasy relationship between different groups of Druids and the authorities at Stonehenge. "Druidry as an expression of a counter-culture now has a continuous history in Britain of more than 200 years," he writes, ending his richly-illustrated book with the counter-cultural Druid and environmental activist King Arthur Pendragon.

http://arts.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article2688275.ece

Elizabethan Catholics

Brilliant summary (as part of his dialogue on the Gunpowder plot) by Ronald Hutton.
see the full stuff here:

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/e-h/hutton.html

Elizabethan Catholics

WW: What would it be like to live as a recusant in late Elizabethan England?

RH: The most common modern analogy for being an Elizabethan Catholic is being a Communist in 1950s America, but being a Communist in 1950s America was a holiday camp compared with being a Catholic recusant under Elizabeth.

Just like in the modern example, you couldn't actually get a job, you were cast out of society, you were suspected of being the local fifth column for a menacing foreign power that stood for everything that your country didn't.

But being an Elizabethan Catholic is actually much worse. You are in danger of having your property searched by armed men without warning at any hour of the day or night. You are fined regularly for the simple act of not turning up to your local parish church. So that's coshing your income at regular intervals.

And, above all, if you actually do what a Catholic is supposed to do, which is to hear the Word of God according to your Church, you need a priest. If you harbour a priest, you're in serious trouble, because this is technically treading on treason, and treason means going against the whole government of the land, to an extent that you risk your life.

WW: Why this fear of Catholicism?

RH: Protestants hated Catholics, because Catholics were the horrible, rotting skeleton in their family cupboard, where everybody had been about two generations before. That's when they were all being conned by the Devil who had perverted the Christian Church into Catholicism to remove everybody's chance of getting to Heaven and condemn everybody to Hell.

So having seen the light, having cottoned on to the real Word of God and got reformed, Protestants saw the Catholics as, collectively, the Devil's hit person – they were the storm troopers of Satan. They were the people who were left in the realm to ensure that the Devil had a real chance of winning back England to eternal fire.

Furthermore, in more straightforward terms, they were the agents of the pope and the pope was linked with the powers of France and Spain, particularly Spain, the strongest, most menacing power in western Europe. So what you're seeing is a Satanic superpower and an evil empire on your doorstep, and the Catholics lodging like a virus inside your body, waiting to kill you off.

Catholics are by definition the people who give loyalty to the pope. And the pope claims the power to depose kings and princes and queens who don't toe his line.

Now if you're an English Protestant around 1560, what you do is look in all directions. To your west is Ireland, stuffed with Catholics; to the north is Scotland, just ceasing to be Catholic, with the Highlands full of menacing Catholics armed to the teeth. Look across to the east and the south and you have the French and the Spanish, who are the super-Catholics, with all the power of a fully armed state system behind them.

So you are cornered, you're surrounded, and you have English Catholics still all among you, everywhere, just waiting for the button to be pushed, to implode your country from the inside, as their adherents crowd in from every point of the compass.

The Raging River

How did you find your spiritual path?

"I have never felt myself to be on a path of any kind, as my life has more the quality of being carried downstream on a raging river full of rocks, so that all I have to do is try to steer a course through the endless rapids and enjoy the thrill of the experience. " (Ronald Hutton)