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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

Beads on a necklace, memory-amber

 

Call them Northern Songlines.

Some remember by books, but for us the Land itself bears memory. All landscapes are mythic, at least potentially.

I've traveled Route 61 south along the Mississippi to the pagan land-sanctuaries of the Driftless Area for so many decades now that it has become, for me, a pilgrimage-route.

So I've re-cast the journey along the lines of the list of place-names in the Táin that recounts the way taken by Medb's army to fateful Cúailnge.

Each place a bead on a necklace, memory-amber.

 

Journey to the Driftless

 

This was their route, east, south and east again from Minneapolis on the Mississippi, Father of Waters:

 

eastward through Pig's Eye of the Sow, called St. Paul,

southward through Newport of the Red Rock,

through Hastings,

through Red Wing of the Clays, under Barn Bluff,

through Lake City on Pepin, where the water-horse swims,

through Wabasha,

past Trempeleau, Rattlesnake Island, where the Horned came down from Heaven,

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
On the Monday After Samhain

As the army of Queen Medb sets out on its ill-starred cattle-raid into Ulster, they encounter a fantastic figure coming toward them.

The young woman is armed. Her chariot is drawn by two black horses.

She wears a dappled cloak with a gold pin, a hooded tunic with red embroidery, and golden shoes.

She carries a weaver's beam of white bronze, inlaid with gold.

Her golden hair is done up in three braids: two wound in a crown around her head, the third hanging down her back to her calf.

Her black eyelashes cast a shadow halfway down her cheek.

Her eyes have triple irises.

“Who are you?” asks Mebd.

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