The Scent of Autumn Fires

& the gaunt beauty of Michaelmas

Self sown sunflower in the front yard, 2 October 2018

Hello lovely friends, and welcome to this note just for you ‘between the moons’.

One thing that’s increasingly obvious about all the opportunities to self-publish online - including and perhaps especially on Substack - is that it’s very easy to find multiple sources of information on any topic under the sun. This is certainly true of my own special interests of folklore, tradition, wild saints and magic.

So when I began this letter to you on Michaelmas Day (29 September) I knew that if I wanted to write about this Quarter Day I was going to have to do it in a different way from what you can find elsewhere. Indeed, we looked at this festival ourselves at Bracken & Wrack last year in Working The Dusk. There, I focussed on St Michael and his problematic slaying of the dragon (I like dragons!) but Michaelmas throws up a host of other issues too. We could spend a whole article talking about them. Oh, wait, that’s exactly what I thought I would do today :-)

Michaelmas. Michael-mass. The word is one of those that I find inexplicably delicious, just for how it looks when you read it or sounds when you say it. Do you have words like that? Words that resonate deeply even though you would be hard pushed to articulate the reason.

If I had to try to analyse my attraction, perhaps it would have to do with the colours at this time of year; the soft misty hues over the heath, the amethyst of michaelmas daisies spangling the fading foliage and bare earth of the flower beds and singing with the first bronzed fallen leaves. Perhaps it’s the gaunt beauty of stubble fields, the thought of all those high church towers dedicated to St Michael & All Angels, the cry of the first wild geese (which I can hear right on cue as I type those words) or the scent of autumn fires. Then there are Michaelmas Fairs, or there were, and the aromas of apple pies and roasting chestnuts.

Sweet chestnuts in Crostwight churchyard, Norfolk, 2 October 2022