CELEBRATING WINTER SOLSTICE

Solstice Fire

There were Solstice celebrations in various parts of town last night. I went over to my old school at the Britannia Community Centre where they were holding ceremonies with drums, singing and a solstice fire.  The highlight of the evening would be a walk around the candle-lit labyrinth.

Solstice celebrations are old Celtic traditions and strangely, as I was riding the bus over to the Centre, suddenly my protagonist Olwen, from my work-in-progress "Dragons in the Sky" began to speak to me.  It's been many years since I channeled Olwen's spirit.  I had set aside her story back in '89 when I wanted to work on the novel about Alexander the Great's little known son.  I had thought at the time that, as I was writing it as a juvenile historical, it would only take me a  year or so, then I'd get back to "Dragons" and finish it.  Besides, I was discouraged with the Celtic novel, having been lead astray by suggestions from a writing instructor and less than enthusiastic critiques.  Well...to make a long saga short...once I decided to write "Shadow" in multiple point of view, it became very complicated and took my much, much longer than ever anticipated.  I finally finished it last December and I'm currently working on the cuts and line edits to get it in perfect shape for publishing.

Candles for Solstice

      In the meantime, i have been retyping the old manuscript of "Dragons" and workshopping it at my critique group. They love it. Especially the Bardic verse that part of it is written in.  But I had decided not to start doing any real edits on it until I am finished with "Shadow" and that won't be until the end of January.  So other than the retyping, I've not given the story or the characters too much thought.

I've certainly not heard any of them 'speak' to me.  That is, until last night.

A Solstice log blazes in the Circle of drummers and chanters.

     "Dragons in the Sky" is very much a first-person narrative, told in the voice of Olwen, a young acolyte of the Raven clan, destined to leave for the Holy Isle where she will become a full-fledged Druid priestess.  I had no idea I was going to write this story, when it began back in around 1978.  One day a voice spoke to me, a young girl, she said her name was Olwen and she wanted to tell me her story.  So I began to channel her spirit and write down what she said.  As the story progressed, some of it written in bardic verse, I was more and more amazed.  At first, I didn't know where exactly this all took place until one of my early visits to England when I was advised by an elderly psychic to visit Stonehenge and to see what spirits spoke to me in the inner circle. (That was when you could still go inside the circle).  Later, while waiting for the bus at Salisbury I had noticed a sign about an Iron Age hill fort just outside of town. As I had time to kill, I decided to walk there.  And as I approached Old Sarum I knew instinctively that this was where Olwen's story took place. 

I made a couple of other visits there later and each time more of her story unfolded.  This past summer I went again, just to research and refresh my memory before I start reworking the novel.  But until now, I have not heard Olwen's voice.  How strange and appropriate it was that she spoke to me when I was on my way to the Solstice rites.



The candle-lit Labyrinth

I walked the candle-lit labyrinth and meditated, wondering where this new year will lead me.  I know I am in touch with Olwen again and I'm glad for that.  And I am confident that "Shadow of the Lion" will find a good publishing home. 

So now, this year ends, and the New Year begins.  And the first day of wintered boded well with bright sunshine and mild weather.  Once the holiday merrymaking is over and things settle back into the new routine, I'll be returning to my work on "Dragons in the Sky" and waiting for Olwen's voice as I write down her very unique and amazing story.  (And yes, there is an Alexander connection in it too!) 





A SALUTE TO THE WINTER SOLSTICE

HAPPY SOLSTICE DAY!

DECEMBER 21, the winter solstice. It's been snowing all day here on the Coast. There must be at least a new foot of the white stuff. I've been hunkered down all day in my apartment with the fireplace blazing and the Christmas lights aglow, listening to Christmas and Hanukah music while I did my housework and later, my writing.

I had an idea that as a salute to the solstice, I should revisit Olwen's story, DRAGONS IN THE SKY: A Celtic Tale, which I began long ago, then shelved in favor of writing Alexander's story. When I started work on SHADOW OF THE LION, I had no idea it was going to take literally years to write. But now I am almost at the end, and recently I was looking in my archives box, and there was the unfinished manuscript of DRAGONS. I am now anxious to get back to work on it, because it is a unique and important tale, one that I have written by channeling the 'voice' of a young girl, Olwen. The story is written in first person and the reason I set it aside was because my writing instructor at the time kept insisting I should be writing it third person. So I tried, and messed it up. And later realized that no, this is Olwen's story, and it has to be told in her voice, in her own words, first person.

Now, in honor of the winter solstice, which was an important time of year for the Celts, I will post some of the first Chapter of DRAGONS. And in doing so, something exciting happened. When I was researching this story, back in the late '70's and during the '80's when I lived in Greece, I didn't have access to a computer. I did go on some field trips to sites in England and researched at libraries, read a lot of books, made lots of notes too. But tonight when I went to find photos to accompany my posting, I was delighted to find so much information, including pictures, so I know when I revisit Olwen's story it will be much easier to access details.

One exciting thing that happened when I was first researching, I visited Stonehenge, and later while I was waiting at the bus stop in Salisbury I noted a brochure that said there was an Iron Age hillfort a few kilometers out of town. Something urged me to go there. And when I did, I had the most fantastic deja-vu experience. I KNEW this was where Olwen's story took place. On another trip to England I went back there and again, I could visualize it exactly as it was back when she lived there (the site has been occupied since the Bronze Age and my story takes place in the 4thC BC

In the story, I mention (because she told me) that her father had come from a holy place in Wales known as Senghenydd. Later on I had my Welsh father read the text to see if I was achieving the lilt of Olwen's voice. He told me that his grandfather had been killed in a mining explosiON in the town of Senghenydd. (In my research it stated that town had been a sacred place during the time of the ancient Celts.)

This is the hillfort of Old Sarum, where Olwen's story takes place.

The following excerpt is from my work-in-progress DRAGONS IN THE SKY, written in "Stanzas" and Bardic verse. This is "Stanza Two", a first person narrative in the voice of Olwen, a 13 year old acolyte of the Raven cult.

The God speaks and says:
Blood red is the snow,
as blood red as the ragged
leaves of the elder trees.

In Ruis, the Elder month, we made sacrifices to the Sun God at the winter solstice. The Druid slaughtered a white roebuck and divined the omens in the blood-splattered snow. But the gods were not appeased, and Boreas, the North Wind, blew down freezing blizzards across the Plain, burying our village in drifts that reached higher than the edges of the roof thatch.

We huddled in our huts around peat fires, wrapped in furs like hibernating animals, until finally some of us tunneled out through the drifts to snare winter hares and track white stag in the forest. Supplies of smoked meat and fish dwindled with each passing storm, and rafters that had been heavy with drying fruit and roots, were bare. While we counted out the last of the bundles of food and herbs, we muttered oaths ot the gods. It seemed that year we were not in their favour.

My guardian, Essylt, was a medicine woman and high priestess of our cult. She was small and bright-eyed, lively as a sparrow; but that winter seemed to tire her, and she began to look grey and care-worn. As the wind howled outside our wattled hut she brooded and I saw her watching the flames of the heart fire, staring silently as though her thoughts had drifted off to other worlds. She kept me busy taking votive offerings to the woodland shrine. The snow as too deep on the trail for her to struggle through, but I made a child's game of it, and kept the pathway trampled clear, carrying offerings of things like dried berries, cups of grain and sometimes a sprig of mistletoe.

The winter's cold took its toll. Almost every day Essylt went out to administer medicines, or to say some words of enchantment against the Raven of Death. We could not wait for the Spring thaw to lay our dead in their barrows, so the bodies were burned on pyres outside the palisade. Most of the victims of the raw weather were the old ones, but once a little child wandered out into a storm and froze, buried in a snowbank. I saw them carrying him home, like a stiff little pup, wrapped in a wolfskin. It grieved me for days, and in spite of the wind and the drifts that reached above my knees, I struggled to the woodland shrine, bringing the last sprigs of vervain to make a supplication to the Mother Goddess.

It was my thirteenth year with the Druids. I had learned all the incantations of magic before I was ten years old. Essylt, being a sorceress and diviner of the auguries, was both my guardian and my teacher. I called her modryh, my Auintie, because she had nursed me in infancy as though she were my natural mother. The Druid said my real mother died in childbirth. I would have been exposed for the wolves if someone had not brought me to the Great Stone Circle on the Plain.

Listen to my song:
I am an honored child.
I am Olwen,
daughter of the Earth Mother,
Child of the Raven.

I LOVE THE SNOW!

playing in the snow, me at aged 18 months
Estevan Saskatchewan

"One Christmas was so much like another, in
those years around the seatown corner now and out of
all sound except the distant speaking of the voices
I sometimes hear a moment before I sleep, that
I can never remember whether it snowed for
six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it
snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
Dylan Thomas 1914-1953 "A Child's Christmas in Wales"

me (age 6) and my little sister Jeanie
taking our dollies for a walk in the snow
Lloydminster, Saskatchewan

I love the snow. So when we had the first snowfall of the season yesterday I felt compelled to go out in it and take some pictures. By today it continued until the snow was deep enough to make snow-men and go sledding. But, as usual here on the "wet" coast, by late afternoon when I finally did go out, intending to take more photographs, it had turned to rain. Now the rain has set in and the snowfall has melted causing a lot of problems with flooding and a slushy mess on the sidewalks and roads. It was pretty while it lasted. I stayed indoors with the fireplace on yesterday and did some work on my Christmas cards, made more notes for my novel, and generally enjoyed a weekend of reasonable leisure. I'm only sorry I didn't get out in today it while it was really coming down, thick white fluffy flakes of it, just like I remember as a child living on the Prairies.

I have lots of happy snow-time memories and so long as I'm dressed warm enough I still enjoy it. However, a storm called "the Pineapple express" is heading our way from Hawaii and the weatherman warns of flooding and torrential rains setting a record for the season. And winter has barely even begun! Enough, already, with the rain. I say "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!"

The first snowfall in the park