to refrain from encroaching on what we don’t quite understand

 

 

I did many wonderful things this week, I laughed often, appreciated my excellent fortune of where and how we live, had enjoyable and enlightening times outdoors, indoors, in conversation and while contemplating.

Somewhere along the line in the past years or so, I think, I must have figured out that I want to have all that (above) despite the ongoing ill-health issues. After a while, it's either giving in and breaking into pieces or getting on with it, sort of.

When I had the three sessions with the clinical nutritionist earlier this year, I was introduced to the proper way of recording food intake, its positive and negative results and why. At first, I found it tedious and thankfully, I only need to do this for 2-3 days every so often to keep on track, but in hindsight, it makes sense and yes, shows some sort of cause and effect.

Anyway, the barium paste seems to have left the body and the bad days are not quite as bad which gave me enough energy to go for another long hillwalk with the man.

We started with a short steep climb to a 11th century castle ruin.

 and proceeded through dense forest in gorgeous autum colours

and found a small cemetery from the middle ages

some excellent views once we got up high

and a soft path with thick gorse bushes on the way down

with plenty of mushrooms

On Thursday was Samhain, one of the Celtic quarter days better known as Halloween and wrongly described as a US custom. I don't mind, really. It's slowly arriving here too but the few kids we saw running around were basically just after bags of sweets.

We built a small fire in the fire bowl on the patio and R talked about the Samhain rituals of his Irish childhood which involved apples and nuts and bairín breac (barmbrack) and much scary laughter and story telling. Athough he grew up in middle class suburbian Dublin, the ancient folklore traditions were part of his life. It was around this time of the year, when I first arrived in R's family and I had No Idea. Especially when the barmbrack was served and my slice miraculously contained the much cherished ring. A barmbrack is a sweet raisin bread that is used for fortune telling (more here). I also thought the entire family was slightly mad when we proceeded to do the weird thing with apples in a bucket of water. 

This here is a lengthy but enjoyable podcast episode put together by the National Folklore Collection of the University College of Dublin explaining and celebrating the Samhain origins of Halloween:

AmbasadaIrlandii · Samhain event recording

 

Folklore is a beautiful way for us to connect with our local landscape—our own natural environment—through the symbols and stories and narratives that are told about it. I think there’s a tendency nowadays to look at these things in terms of “They may be a bit twee,” or “They’re slightly footy because they’re so odd,” or “Ha-ha, who could take those silly things seriously?” But I think they should be afforded much more dignity. So much of this has been distilled through countless generations. The contemporary experience of modernity that we’re passing through now is a sort of restless discord, a feverish hand-wringing. And these structures—whether fairy lore or ritual or belief or custom found in our traditional practices—hold a lot of joy, profanity, wit, wisdom, humor, darkness, even, which is useful. They’re meaningful, they orient us, they ground us. They can help us move from disenchantment to enchantment with the world around us. When you look out across a landscape, it’s not just some bleak void—there’s a mystery and depth and richness to it. Suddenly, there’s a flash of the fantastic into the ordinary, into the everyday.

 Jonny Dillon (archivist of the National Folklore Collection at the University College of Dublin)