These Iron Inklings

icy winds & wassail cheer

For January I give you vests of skins,

And mighty fires in hall, and torches lit;

Chambers and happy beds with all things fit;

Smooth silken sheets, rough furry counterpanes;

And sweetmeats baked; and one that deftly spins

Warm arras; and Douay cloth, and store of it;

And on this merry manner still to twit

The wind, when most his mastery the wind wins.

Or issuing forth at seasons in the day,

Ye'll fling soft handfuls of the fair white snow

Among the damsels standing round, in play:

And when you all are tired and all aglow,

Indoors again the court shall hold its sway,

And the free Fellowship continue so.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, January

January sun on the heath, 11 January 2023.

Hello, and a Happy New Year! It’s the first edition of Bracken & Wrack for 2024, so welcome to the beginning of another year of snatches of moonshine and, hopefully, magic.

In this edition:

• Wolf Moon

• The Wolf’s Creamy Cauliflower & Chestnut Soup

• Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Eavan Boland, Victor Tapner and Algernon Charles Swinburne

• St Pega and the Swans

• The Wassail Bowl

WOLF MOON

Today is new moon, and it’s the new Wolf Moon. As I’ve discovered through my explorations for Bracken & Wrack, the name of each lunar tide covers the entire span from new moon to new moon, with the full moon being merely the peak or apex of the tide bearing its name. 

Although every lunar tide has been known by multiple names in different cultures, there is almost unanimous concensus that January’s Moon belongs to the wolf. This is partly I think because Wolf Moon is such a wintry name, conjuring images of packs of grey-backed beasts padding through the snow, heads thrown back, howling under the stars.

I recently read that the Farmer’s Almanac in the USA was the first publication to collect and popularise the traditional names of the Moons, especially those used by the Native American tribes. It was this Almanac that attributed each of the names to a Western calendar month, which of course bears no relationship to the way the tribes themselves would have calculated time. So there would really be no such thing as a ‘January’ moon, only the one after the midwinter solstice and the one after that, and so on. 

For this reason, you will occasionally find the December full moon named as Wolf Moon if it falls during this month but after the midwinter solstice, as has just happened in 2023.  But by and large it has stuck as one of the keynote images for January, which is why I thought it was high time to find out a little more about the Moon’s name-companion for this lunar cycle. 

We all know about fairytale wolves, nearly always trickster characters like the bogus granny in Little Red Riding Hood or the Big Bad Wolf who tries to blow down the houses of the Three Little Pigs. Often in tales, the wolf is belittled or made an object of mockery, perhaps as a way of ‘taming’ the inherent fear of the wild that still runs deep. Not a fairytale as such, but a more contemporary example of this theme is the 1967 children’s book, Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf.

The Brothers Grimm are probably the best known tellers and re-tellers of traditional fairytales. Wilhelm (1786-1859) and Jacob (1785-1863) grew up in Hanau in Germany at a time when the area would still have been thickly forested. It’s difficult to pin down the age of some of the original stories, but many of them evolved in a Europe that we would now hardly recognise, so dense was it in wildwood in which any unseen horror might lurk. 

Here in England, the wolf is thought to have become almost extinct in during the reign of Henry VII (1485–1509), or at least very rare. By this time, wolves had become limited to the Lancashire forests of Blackburnshire and Bowland, the wilder parts of the Derbyshire Peak District, and the Yorkshire Wolds. The very last one is said to have been killed in Scotland in 1680, though others place the date in the 18th century and there is even one reported sighting from 1888. 

But the writings of the Romans and later the Anglo-Saxons show that wolves were once extraordinarily numerous on these isles. Animal remains reveal that, unlike other mammals, wolves didn’t become smaller in size as they became island-dwellers. They were probably just as big as Arctic wolves. 

It’s recorded that in 950 CE, King Athelstan imposed an annual tribute of 300 wolf skins on Welsh king Hywel Dda. Wolves at that time were especially numerous in the Marches - the districts bordering Wales - which were heavily forested.

In the same era, as an alternative to being put to death, those accused of crimes would sometimes be ordered to provide a certain number of wolf tongues annually. The monk Galfrid, whilst writing about the miracles of St Cuthbert, observed that there were so many wolves in Northumbria that it was virtually impossible for even the richest farmers to protect their sheep, despite employing armies of men for the job.

There are many, many recorded examples of the uneasy relationship between humans wanting to protect their livestock, and hungry wolves. You can read more about wolves in Great Britain here. 

Now, I’ve discovered something that’s interesting for us here at Bracken & Wrack. We’ve been looking at the names of the Moons for over a year now, and I, at least, had bowed to the understanding that the most commonly known names primarily derived from the experiences of native North American tribes. Over and over again you will read that the Wolf Moon is so called because January was the month in which the tribes would be most vividly aware of the howling of wolves. 

That, of course is quite a romantic notion, whereas I’m afraid that what I’m about to tell you is a little more down to earth. Although wolves were trapped and killed in huge numbers throughout the year, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that the month of January was known as ‘wolf monath’, as this was the first full month of wolf hunting by the nobility. Theoretically, the hunting season ended on 25 March, encompassing the birthing season when wolves were at their most vulnerable and their fur was of the greatest quality.

I know. There’s no way of dressing this up as being nice.  

I wonder why 25 March - Lady Day - marked the end of the season? I know that in England and Wales the New Year officially began on 25 March for several centuries, and that might be the official explanation, but I like to think that after that date each year the Lady would step in to protect her favoured strong, wise and beautiful beasts. 

So much for the mythos of the wolf, but how much do we really know about their ways? I found an organisation called Wolf Watch UK, whose conservation centre and sanctuary for displaced wolves extends to over 100 acres of a wooded valley in Shropshire, on the Welsh borders. In other words, in the area they favoured so strongly when they roamed free and feral over the land. 

The charity’s website features a Wolf Facts section, which told me all kinds of things I had never thought to ask about wolves, and which you may find interesting too as we enter their special lunar month. 

Did you know that, despite their fearsome reputation, wolves are one of the shyest of all animals in the northern wilderness? They have a high fear of humans and will walk away even if you approach one of their kills. Their main diet is ungulates, meaning hooved animals like deer, elk and moose, but they will also eat mice, beavers, squirrels and even fish. Like dogs they chew grass for their digestion, and need to drink lots of water. 

Wolves live above ground and only use burrows for giving birth and raising pups. These they usually dig out themselves on high ground, close to water. Adult wolves lie on higher areas overlooking the den, which only the mother is allowed to enter. 

Female wolves come into season once a year, in late winter. The breeding season is from January to April, the gestation period being 59-68 days. Although female wolves become sexually active in their second year and males are fertile by the age of 22 months, in the wild many do not breed until they are four or five years old.

Wolves are very intelligent, having a brain 17 per cent larger than a dog of comparable size. They seem to learn readily and to retain what they have learned for long periods of time. They have sharper hearing, vision and sense of smell than the domestic dog, so much so that it’s been said that a wolf’s vision is 100 times more powerful than that of a human and that they can hear a sound six miles away through a forest or ten miles across open tundra. They have also been known to respond to human howls from three miles away.

You can find out more about wolves by checking out Wolf Watch UK’s website (and also sponsor a wolf!) but let’s finish here with the thing we all want to know. Why do wolves howl?

Well, for lots of reasons, as it turns out. Some of these are to attract a mate, to reassemble a scattered pack, upon waking, to stimulate a pack to gather for a hunt, after intense social interaction, and when disturbed but not frightened enough to run away.

Disappointingly, the idea that they howl at the full moon is apparently a myth, as research has shown that moon phase has no effect on the intensity of howling. 

The one I like best though, is that it’s thought that wolves often howl simply because they are happy.

After reading this, I wonder whether you’ll be inspired to re-write a fairy tale, turning it around so that the wolf ceases to be a feared entity to be ‘tamed’ through ridicule or violence? Then, just perhaps, we can reclaim our own wild and run with these magical, powerful creatures, strong of heart and fleet of foot. 

Wolf as the Knight of Stones in the Greenwood Tarot.

THE WOLF’S CREAMY CAULIFLOWER & CHESTNUT SOUP

This is just the thing to warm up with after running with the wolves under the stars, and it’s gluten free and vegan too. I’ve adapted it a little from a Deliciously Ella recipe.

1 onion, peeled and diced

3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

1 x 180g pack whole cooked chestnuts (eg Merchant Gourmet)

1 level teasp ground coriander

1 level teasp ground cinnamon

1 teasp ground cumin

1 heaped teasp bouillon powder or a vegetable stock cube dissolved in boiling water

1 cauliflower cut into very small pieces about 1cm in size

1 x 400ml tin coconut milk, plus a rinsed out tin filled with oat/almond milk from a carton

drizzle olive oil

sea salt and black pepper.

Place a pan on medium heat, add olive oil, onion, garlic and salt. Cook for 10 minutes until soft.

ONce soft, add the chestnuts reserving one or two for the top, spices, and cauliflower pieces. Cook for 10 minutes until the cauliflower begins to soften.

Pour in the coconut milk, other plant milk, bouillon/stock and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes until the cauliflower is completely soft.

Blitz until smooth using a blender or food processor.

Pour back into the pan and reheat, adding a little more milk or water to thin if desired.

Season before serving with reserved chopped chestnut as a garnish. You might also like a spoonful of coconut yogurt on the top.

The wildwood in winter, just by the heath.

These are outsiders, always.

These stars —

these iron inklings of an Irish January,

whose light happened

thousands of years before

our pain did; they are, they have always been

outside history.

They keep their distance.

Under them remains

a place where you found

you were human, and

a landscape in which you know you are mortal.

And a time to choose between them.

I have chosen:

out of myth in history I move to be

part of that ordeal

who darkness is

only now reaching me from those fields,

those rivers, those roads clotted as

firmaments with the dead.

How slowly they die

as we kneel beside them, whisper in their ear.

And we are too late.

We are always too late.

Eavan Boland, Outside History

Low sun along the lane, 10 January 2021.

With the first frosts the first death came

his face hair showed he was wasting

We drank those nights rank barley

from a cask and the lad drank too

He was with us when we caught

the moorhen and the goose

Then the wind cut like flint across the fen

and split the wattles of the round house

These marshes will bear a dark harvest

before spring comes and the corn.

Victor Tapner, ‘Iceni’, Flatlands

Winter willow on the marsh, Potter Heigham, Norfolk.

A few days ago on St Pega’s Day 2024, I pledged to write a book, giving Pega her voice back and letting her tell her story through me. I’m giving myself a year and a day to complete it. I’ll let you know how it’s going now and again during the year, but to mark this new beginning, I thought I would share again a piece of writing about Pega that appeared in Bracken & Wrack at this time last year. Although my book will be fictional it’s inspired by what has already been written down as ‘fact’ so the two will interweave and perhaps, who knows, surprising things may emerge that have remained hidden in the fen silt for over 1300 years.

In First Stirrings, the issue of Bracken & Wrack in which this article first appeared, I included a recipe for St Pega’s Hot Spiced Posset, which I highly recommend to keep out the winter chill. A steaming mug of this would be an ideal accompaniment to sitting down for a read.

ST PEGA AND THE STREAM

Crossing Acorn Wood I reach the lane and turn right towards the stream, as I do each time I walk that way. It’s not far to the place by the bridge where I scramble down the bank to crouch, just above the tumble of water over the little weir. Down here is its own world, sheltered both from sight of passers by and from the wind. If ever the sun is shining, it shines directly onto my face here and the warmth, especially when it comes as an unexpected midwinter gift, is a blessing.

Here, once, a water shrew scurried along the opposite bank, oblivious to my presence as it moved within its own tiny universe, a world within worlds. Dragonflies have brushed my cheek and once a water wagtail zigzagged across the glassy surface. This spring, there has been the otter, or perhaps otters. Four times now I have caught more than a glimpse of a sleek brown head and lithe body twisting, turning and somersaulting over the weir and away.

I greet St Pega, as I always do at this place. Pega, the young Anglo-Saxon noblewoman - maybe even a princess - who followed her brother Guthlac to the then-island now named Crowland deep within the Fens. There, they built a hermitage and became anchorites of the marshes, learning the ways of the wild and tending the crows and magpies. In time, they founded Crowland Abbey, which still stands today. They were very early English saints: Guthlac died in 714 CE and Pega in 719 CE.

The tale says that Guthlac banished Pega from Crowland. Possibly delirious with self-flagellation and marsh fever, he insisted that she had come to him as a demon to tempt him to break his vow never to eat bread before sunset. So she left the place that she loved, setting off down the river in a small boat to found her own hermitage on another small island in the Fens. Did the moorhens, kingfishers, otters and water-shrews befriend her? What knowing, what cunning were surely hers, gained during the fifteen years she spent there alone? Thinking, observing, reflecting, wisdom-gathering. The bountiful resources of river and hedgerow would have provided foodstuffs, cures, charms and perhaps even tiny adornments to her simple cell.

Swan feathers down by the Otter Stream.

Pega’s marshy home by the River Nene was far to the west of here, at the village now known as Peakirk after the church that was founded in her name. But in the streams, reed beds, Broads and rivers close to The Old Shop I catch a glimpse of Pega and am inspired by her deft handling of the injustice that was served her. I like to believe that she reversed the pain of banishment into a gift of growth that she might never otherwise have experienced, turning it to riches. 

When St Guthlac lay dying, he asked for his sister to be sent for to perform the last rites. Despite being banished at his hand, it seems that she did not hesitate to leap aboard her trusty boat - perhaps a Fenland version of a coracle? - to row back upstream and lay her brother to rest. 

On the way back to the Abbey, she miraculously cured a blind man. It’s said that she used salt that had been blessed by Guthlac but this sounds very much like patriarchal propaganda to me! By this time, St Pega’s knowledge of herbal medicine would necessarily have been extensive and in any case, why can’t she be allowed the possibility of miracle-working on her own account?

Not long after she had fulfilled Guthlac’s wishes and carried out further honouring of his remains as she felt called to do, she left Crowland forever and made a pilgrimage to Rome. Such an enormous adventure in Anglo-Saxon times, holding danger at every turn. It would have been like stepping into another world after living within the austere walls of Crowland Abbey or her marshy cell.

But, oddly enough, there’s a link between her old home and the city in which she found herself with its unfamiliar colours and bustle and scents. A local saying in south-east Lincolnshire runs ‘As sweet as Crowland bells’. And, it is said that as Pega entered Rome all the bells pealed in acknowledgement of her saintliness. 

We know little concrete about St Pega, but we do have a medieval manuscript fragment with a beautifully-illuminated initial ‘P’ and a music score below.  It is titled, in a monkish hand, ‘Music For St Pega’s Day’. 

Voices, bells, echoes.

Here at new moon we are riding the tide of St Pega. She’s especially dear to my heart. By our current reckoning her feast day falls on 8 January, but if you take into account the Lost Days of 1752 and choose to mark the date according to the Julian Calendar it’s 21 January, so we are between the two. I always breathe a sigh of relief that we have two chances to mark any festival, not to mention a tide in between!

My maternal ancestry is of the Fens, from the part of the old county of Huntingdonshire known as the Black Fen. It too is a world apart, with its own customs, dialect and superstitions that cling on to this day. Maybe - probably - this feeds into my fascination with St Pega.

Something white flutters on the far side of the bank and I notice a scatter of swan feathers. They’re little downy ones from the softest part of the swan’s belly, intimate and gently poignant, loosened through preening. Tokens of what I already knew: that I am not the only one who lingers in this place. A swan also visits here, and I imagine her wide black feet sliding down the bank to launch herself into the thin sliver of water she probably imagines to be a real stream.

The farmer will tell you that it’s little more than a glorified drainage ditch. One of its teasing side-channels is dug out between a silvery tangle of birches. It’s another spot where I squat between the roots. Once I flicked in a glimmering moon and once a pearly pin, fitting gifts for the ancestors and water spirits. Or are they one and the same in this place?

At the Fenland church that bears her name, a stained glass panel shows St Pega surrounded by swans.

Stained glass swans at St Pega’s church on a road trip to Peakirk. 27 September 2023.

FROM THE WASSAIL BOWL

Wassail, wassail all over the town!
Our bread it is white and our ale it is brown,
Our bowl, it is made of the good maple tree;
From the wassailing bowl we'll drink unto thee.

Come, butler, and fill us a bowl of your best,
And we hope your soul in Heaven may rest;
But if you do bring us a bowl of the small,
Then down shall go butler and bowl and all.

Come here, sweet maid, in the frilly white smock,
Come trip to the door and trip back the lock!
Come trip to the door and pull back the pin,
And let us jolly wassailers in.

Gloucestershire Wassail, traditional.

Much has been written already about the custom of wassailing the orchard trees, often on Twelfth Night or on Old Twelfth Night. This latter is often taken as being 17 January, eleven days after 6 January. As we know, time has now slipped - as time has a habit of doing - and we are thirteen days adrift. So Old Twelfth Night is 19 January, but that certainly doesn’t stop the wassailers from making merry a couple of nights earlier.

Rather than repeating what is already out there about this bright festive moment in the middle of what can be a very chilly month, I thought I would talk a little about the bowl in which the wassail itself is traditionally served. Now, there is a drink to truly warm the cockles.

For this, thanks are due to Nigel G Pearson and his Walking the Tides. This is a wonderful resource, arranged seasonally, for all things traditional and magical.

Nigel tells us that surviving examples of wassail bowls are centuries old and are held in high regard by their keepers as treasured family possessions. They can be very valuable. They are often crafted from maple wood, as described in the traditional Gloucestershire Wassail carol above, and edged and bound with silver chasework. Their form harks back to the toasting bowls of the Anglo-Saxon and Viking periods.

They are the precursor to the modern punch bowl, whose shape and function derives directly from them, and are often of great size, holding up to a gallon (c. 4.5 litres) of liquid.

Maple (Acer campestre) is well suited to all kinds of wood carving and turning but, although it’s an ancient tree it has attracted very little traditional folklore. The desirability of the wood for the making of the wassail bowl is just about the only known lore concerning it.

The name maple comes from the Anglo-Saxon word mapldur, the dur part deriving from the same root as the French word for hard or enduring; durable, so it’s no surprise that this wood was chosen for the wassail bowl.

There are many recipes for the actual wassail drink, easily found, but all follow a general rule of hot, spiced ale with baked apples and sugar. Even if you don’t own an ancient wassail bowl - indeed even if you don’t have any apple trees to toast - it’s guaranteed to warm and cheer any bleak mid-January eve.

Field Maple - ‘The hard wood is highly valued and used to make lathe-turned articles, in wood carving and joinery’.

Hail, January, that bearest here

On snowbright breasts the babe-faced year

That weeps and trembles to be born.

Hail, maid and mother, strong and bright,

Hooded and cloaked and shod with white,

Whose eyes are stars that match the morn.

Thy forehead braves the storm's bent bow,

Thy feet enkindle stars of snow.

Algernon Charles Swinburne, ‘January’, A Year’s Carols

Sunrise from my bedroom window, 13 January 2021.

Until next time.

With love, Imogen x