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Molly Leigh, Molly Leigh,

chase me 'round the apple tree.

(Children's rhyme)

If you should happen to go to the churchyard of St. John the Baptist in Burslem, Staffordshire, you'll have no difficulty picking out the grave of Molly Leigh, the witch of Burslem (1685-1748). Unlike all the other graves, it's laid out North-South instead of East-West.

But let's let Sybil Leek tell the story:

The local witches asked for permission to erect a regular tombstone for Molly Leigh. This request was refused, but a few days later, a rough tombstone had been erected. The local witches had dragged the altar stones from their Sabbat meeting place several miles away and made a crude tomb. No one dared move the stones. The grave can be seen today with the strange rough stones piled over it at the very edge of the churchyard of St. John's in Burslem (21).

Like many of Sybil's stories, this one doesn't quite hold together. Through all the permission-asking and stone-dragging, wouldn't the witches have been outing themselves? What did they do for an altar at Sabbat after they'd moved the stones?

When I first heard this story back in the late 60s, I envisioned—per Sybil's description—something rude and megalithic. Quite other is the real thing, though: sculptured, architectural almost. Well, witches have always been good at Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle. That must have been quite some Sabbat meeting place, though.

In fact, Sybil has grafted her story of the Old Religion onto local folklore. Grafting, of course, is something else witches have always been good at. How, though, did the local children, with their macabre game of tag around the grave, know that the altar's secret name was the Apple Tree?

In the old days, few witches received an identifiable grave. One might expect that Molly's would have become something of a pilgrimage destination for modern witches.

To judge by the flowers regularly left at the grave—you can see some in the photo above—it has. If you like, you too can leave a virtual flower on her grave's webpage.

I left a spray of Sunwort there myself, with a poem:

Hot, isn't it? The lake sure looks nice and cool.

Don't go in, though. Not now, not yet: not in May. No swimming until Midsummer's Eve: that's what the ancestors said.

Until then, the water is the exclusive preserve of the People of the Water. You know who I mean: the ones that live in the lakes.

Oh, they're beautiful but dangerous. And they like us, all right. Too much. Go in now and you may never come out again.

Alive, anyway.

Midsummer's Eve, though, there's a blessing on the waters. The Sun and the Moon come down to bathe, and that's why we all go skinny-dipping that night. After that, the waters are safe.

Well, safer.

(Tribal Territory of the Dobunni)

So, remind me again why I should be concerned about a bunch of boy-boffing, bread-eating Redcrests?

I mean, really, what's with those Romans?

They're so cowardly that they can't have sex with an equal: it has to be someone weaker than them, someone they can overpower. That's what it takes to make their puny little dicks hard. That's why they like boys so much.

I mean, what's with that?

And what's with all that bread they eat, anyway? Bread, bread, bread: it's all they ever eat. No wonder they're such weaklings.

I mean, really: why can't they eat porridge, like real people do?

Porridge, now, that's real food.

Porridge makes you strong.

Of Thorunn's Death, and What Happened After

In the days of Leif the Lucky, a certain spae-woman named Thorunn died while visiting a neighboring district. On her death-bed, she asked that her body be taken back to her family farm to be barrowed, a distance of some three days' travel. She promised that those who carried out her request would not be the worse off for it. Five men from the farm said that they would see to this.

After her death, they built a coffin for her, loaded it onto a horse, and set off. Now, it is no mean feat to balance a coffin and body on the back of a horse, and going was slow. Toward the end of the day, they were caught in a rainstorm, and soon all five were drenched to the skin.

They stopped at a farm and asked guest-room for the night. The farmer was by no means pleased to see the men and their burden.

“You may sleep in the byre tonight,” he told them, “but, as I did not know of your coming, I cannot offer you a meal.” Wet and hungry, the men bedded down in the byre, and all agreed that the farmer's actions were stingy and mean.

That night, a thrall-woman went into the kitchen of the farm-house to smoor the fire. There she beheld a tall, pale woman, stark naked, slicing a cheese into pieces. The sight so disconcerted her that she went to the bed-closet where the farmer and his wife lay and told them of what she had seen.

The farmer's wife climbed out of the bed-closet and went to the kitchen. Sure enough, all was as the thrall-woman had said, but now the naked woman was slicing rashers off a joint of smoked lamb and placing them on a wooden trencher.

“Who are you? What are you doing in my house?” the farmer's wife demanded, but the naked woman gave no sign of having heard her, and continued her task without speaking.

The woman went back to the bed-closet and told her husband: “This is to do with those men in the byre.”

Mother Universe Herself

Mothers come in many kinds.

Today, we bless them all.

All mothers here present,

mothers that were

and mothers yet to be,

as well as all those who mother,

for—as I don't need to tell you—

mother is as much a verb as a noun:

may the Mother of All,

she who 13.8 billion years ago

Let's just be up front here: depending on where you stand in relation to it, any standing stone, anywhere in the world, can point to the Winter Solstice.

That doesn't mean that there's an intended alignment, though.

In the early 19^th century, for reasons unknown, a Yankee farmer named Jonathan Pattee covered a hill near North Salem, Connecticut, with drystone walls and rock-built chambers. There's nothing here that other New England farmers of the same period didn't build, but Pattee took it to extremes. Perhaps we may best—using the felicitous 18^th century architectural term—describe his life's work as a “folly.”

Today the site goes by the grandiose (and rather silly) name of America's Stonehenge. Back when I was new in Craftdom, it was called Mystery Hill—a much better name, really.

(The former tells, the latter entices. The latter opens the door; the former slams it shut.)

Many claims have been made for the site, all unproven. Vikings, Irish monks, and peripatetic ancient Celts are only a few of those claimed as its builders.

Quack history has its own fashions. Back when the “megalithic yard” was in style, megalithic yards suddenly sprouted up all over AS/MH. Then, when archaeo-astronomy became au courant, heretofore unregarded standing stones were suddenly discovered to point to the solstice, equinox, and cross-quarter sunrises.

Take, for example, the claimed Winter Solstice alignment. It's not a large stone, admittedly, but with an avenue cleared through the forest between it and the point of Winter Solstice sunrise, it sure looks impressive.

But it isn't really.

Don't look now, but the guy walking down the sidewalk is dragging a life-sized wooden cross, hooked over his shoulder.

(Well, big enough to crucify a large child on, anyway.)

I think of H. L. Mencken's famous definition of Puritanism: “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having fun.”

We are. It's the first Sunday in May, which means that here in the pagan neighborhood it's the annual May Day Parade down Bloomington Avenue. Thousands of people, as we do every year, have gathered to dance down the street in collective joy that Winter is finally over.

As the guy gets closer, I notice that his cross has a caster on the bottom. Hmph. Jesus should have had it so easy.

A satirist by nature, I can't help myself. I start to sing:

The wheels on the cross go round and round,

round and round, round and round;

the wheels on the cross go round and round,

all through the town.

People around me laugh. The guy looks irritated. Not quite the reaction that he'd expected, maybe.

A while later he comes back, headed back to wherever he came from. This time people around me join in.