“OH—JUST LOOK AT THAT!” ANNE gasped and pointed ahead to our right. “It’s fantastic…”
And so it was. We were on our way back to our Allihies cottage after a lively evening in Castletownbere, and a full moon was slowly slipping out from behind the distant Caha range, bathing the long swaths of peat moor in a phosphorescent light. I stopped the car and we got out. The air was chill but motionless. The silence was tangible, and we stood without talking, watching the moon ease slowly upward into the sky.
Then Anne pointed again toward the mountains. “What are those over there?”
I stared hard. Slowly an image appeared…large, silhouetted objects rising out of the dark immensity of the land…strange and yet familiar.
“I don’t know…Ah! Wait a minute—it’s Derreenataggart. Of course. The great stone circle. I’d forgotten we were so close…They look so eerie at night.”
Anne nodded. She was not a great lover of eerie things. Especially at night.
“Let’s go visit them again. In the moonlight,” I suggested.
“You sure you want to do that? It’s so late…”
“Aw, c’mon. It won’t take a minute.”
I took her silence for agreement (not at all the way Anne intended it), and then I spotted an odd vehicle over by a cluster of stumpy, wind-cowed trees. It was a bizarre, custom-made contraption. Part school bus, part caravan, part old hot-dog-and-burger wagon, if the faded sign over the side windows was any indication.
“Looks like an overnighter,” I said. “Travelers. It’s one of those Traveler vans.”
“Our modern-day gypsies.”
“Reminders of when we were writing our early travel books!” I said.
“Yes—but that was just the two of us in one tiny camper. Some of these Travelers move about in huge packs. They’re quite a problem over in Engand. I remember they settled in a field one time—just opposite my parents’ home…”
“Well—there’s only one here. So let’s leave them in peace and get to the stones. It’s cold…”
And there they were, a circle of monoliths, sheened by luminescent moonlight and enclosing the great central stone itself. It resembled some mighty leader surrounded by his (or her) loyal acolytes.
Our previous visits here had always seemed a little underwhelming. In the daylight, the stones certainly appeared smaller than we’d expected, although in actual fact, this five-thousand-year-old creation predates the Pyramids of Egypt, and is one of the most impressive circles in the southwest. But on this particular night it felt very different—in more ways than one. First of all, the stones seemed far larger and more dramatic than before. And despite the benign moonlight and the shimmering festoon of stars—almost more stars than space—there was an air of menace about the enclosing circle. Anne, of course, sensed it immediately.
“Will we be long here?” she whispered plaintively.
“We’ve only just got here!”
“I’m not sure I like this place…at least not at night!”
It was then I saw the lights. Faint flickers at first, like fireflies, but as I focused, I realized they were tiny flames. Five of them. In a line.
“What is it?” Ann asked nervously. “What are you looking at?”
“Lights. Candles, I think. Down there—beyond the circle.”
Anne saw them too. “Let’s go now,” she said with a slight tremor in her voice. “It’s really late…”
“No—just give me a minute. I want to see what they are—”
“I’m not coming with you,” she said. But she came anyway, and we walked together slowly and cautiously, not knowing what to expect. And then a voice, soft and definitely feminine, whispered, “Hello.”
“Hi,” I said, nervously looking around for the owner of the voice. And then I spotted her, half hidden by a huge round stone. She was dressed in very dark clothes. If the moon hadn’t been out, she would have been virtually invisible. “I’m sorry—are we disturbing you…?”
“No—please. Join me.”
She seemed very small and waiflike, hardly more than a teenager by the look of her young face bathed in the soft moonlight. She wore a dark cloak, wrapped like a security blanket over her slight shoulders. Five tiny candles in windproof jars were placed in an arc around her.
“Is that your van back there?” I asked, not quite knowing how to address this odd little figure.
“Yeah—a real mess, isn’t it? We’re in the middle of doing it up.”
“We?”
“Bob, my boyfriend—partner—and me. He’s gone off walking over there somewhere…” She pointed vaguely down into the darkness beyond the stone circle.
“And are you…celebrating something? You know, the candles…”
“Right. The winter solstice…the longest night…usually around December twenty-first…it depends on the moon.”
“Well, we won’t disturb you…”
“No, no. Sit down if you want. Not many people come up here at this time.”
Anne seemed hesitant, but we both eased ourselves down on the soft grass anyway.
“So—what happens at the winter solstice then?”
“Ah well—it’s the time of Cailleach—the Winter Spirit. Some call her The Hag. She has different names in different parts of the Celtic world. Last year, we were way up in the north of Scotland. We were lucky, we got the aurora borealis too—you know, the northern lights—but the moon was often too bright. They’re so beautiful—have you seen them?”
“No,” said Anne, finally deciding to join in. “Even though we spent some time on Harris in the Outer Hebrides, we never got the full show.”
“Oh, it’s great! It usually starts with a sort of hazy, ghostly rainbow—white—right across the sky, and then things come that look like huge searchlights but softer, misty…and then these sort of colored curtains rise up and dance really slowly—they look like they’re throbbing…very gently…honestly, it’s fabulous! And they’re very important to tribal people—y’know, people living way up north around the Arctic Circle. The Inuit in Canada say they’re lanterns carried by spirits of the dead lighting the way to heaven. The Lapps say they’re gifts from God to relieve the disappearance of the sun in winter. Oh—and Galileo too—he called them ‘the sunrise of the north.’”
“That’s an enticing idea—a northern dawn,” I said.
“It was best on the nights of the dark moon—not like tonight. Although tonight is special too.”
“Is that what the candles are for—the Winter Spirit?” asked Anne.
“Yeah. Absolutely. Celebrating Cailleach. Knowing that from now on we’re moving into shorter nights and longer days. Moving through Imbolc—that’s the end of January—a time of one of the celebrations for Brighde—the earth goddess. And then comes the spring equinox in late March when the new light comes…that’s the time of fertility and fresh life…”
“You know, I’ve heard some of these terms,” said Anne. “I just never linked them to exact dates and names. All I remember is the summer solstice—around mid-June…”
“June twenty-first—the longest day.”
“…and all that crazy stuff that goes on in England at Stonehenge and Avebury, and Silsbury and Glastonbury…”
“Yeah, it’s become a bit ridiculous nowadays—pseudo-Druids, New Agers, crystal planters, trance dancing, weird music, and TV cameras galore! It’s all so fake, it’s sickening…”
“And those Wicca exponents too, I suppose?” I asked.
“Well, Wicca’s a little different, isn’t it. I’m becoming more interested in that. Bob’s not so sure, he thinks it’s a bit too…‘witchy.’ I try to explain that Wicca is like ‘white’ as opposed to ‘black’ magic—y’know, ‘the black arts.’”
“Well,” said Anne, “you’ve picked the right place to sense all these things. And on the winter solstice too!”
“Yes! And it’s so beautiful, isn’t it? This place is so…resonant. Part of a huge network of circles and standing stones and ley lines—you know—lines of earth energy…”
“Right,” I mumbled. “Ley lines…” (a subject I’ve always regarded with some suspicion)
“You feel you’re touching something timeless—a great mass of ancient knowledge and truth and wisdom—thousands of years old. A power that used to be understood, but it’s been forgotten for so long. The power of the Earth Mother—all these great eternal forces of nature…”
Suddenly she stopped and giggled. “I’m sorry—really I am. I don’t normally talk so much…honestly…I hope you don’t mind…”
“No, no, not at all,” said Anne. “Go on. It’s very interesting.”
Obviously complaints about the cold and the deep dark and the menacing stones had been forgotten for the moment. And that was just fine, even though the skeptical me was wondering about the veracity of this strange little person sitting all by herself in her black garments surrounded by these tiny candles. All very odd.
“What do you and your partner do…you know…living in your van. Do you do crafts…are you writers?”
“No—and yes,” she said ambiguously. “We kind of do whatever we feel like doing. I’m trained in calligraphy, so I usually find someone wanting signs or wedding invitations…anything. I’m also an illustrator, so I make cards that sell pretty well down south, in Kent, where I come from. And Bob—my partner—oh, I’m sorry. I’m Mary, by the way—I forgot to introduce myself.”
We all introduced ourselves and she continued. “Bob is a fantastic carpenter and builder. And a folksinger. He’s well known in the south. Gets a lot of gigs and stuff…oh, and a lot of other things we do. It seems to work. We get by. Living on the road isn’t that expensive—except for the petrol! That monster drinks the stuff like a thirsty camel. That’s why we call it the Camel…”
“Great name,” I said to Anne, and we smiled reminiscently. We’d begun our own traveling lives in a similar fashion eons ago, long before I started writing and illustrating travel books. In a way listening to Mary was like listening to our earlier selves—except for all the stuff about solstices and equinoxes and Earth Mothers. Somehow we’d never seriously explored those particular avenues. But I was certainly willing to hear more.
“So—why are you doing all this? What are you personally looking for?” I asked.
Mary giggled again. It was enticing. She didn’t come across at all like one of those “I’ve found it, and you haven’t” New Age converts. There seemed be no complacency. No preaching. She didn’t seem to demand control of the channel changers. She seemed to be just someone reaching out to aspects and forces in our world that most of us either scoff at, reject, or blissfully ignore.
“I’m not always sure what I’m looking for. I’m not even sure if there’s any specific ‘it.’ I think it’s more of a process of letting go and opening up and seeing what comes…does that make any sense?”
“Yes,” said Anne adamantly. “Yes, it does.”
Mary continued. “I don’t think there’s any end-thing I want or need. I’m just excited to…‘go with the flow.’” She laughed out loud. “Clichéd—but it’s what it feels like, you know. Flowing. Seeing where the flow takes us. There’s so much inside us—all of us—that we rarely use. We don’t even know it exists much of the time. I think the ancients knew. I’m sure they felt themselves intuitively to be part of these powerful forces—a huge network of forces—that linked them with…well…everything.”
“That’s the impression you certainly get when you read about ancient cultures—tribes in Amazonia, the Australian Aborigines, Native Americans…,” I said.
“Yeah—right. They were all tapping into energies that we don’t seem to understand anymore at all nowadays. We’ve got too many distractions—we’re all so…separate, I suppose. The people who placed these stones were fully in tune with the power of the seasons—Bealtaine, Lammas, Samhain—the Celtic New Year at the beginning of November when they light those huge bonfires. I mean, the whole layout of the stones here—and other places on the island and all over Britain—reflect the exact phases of the seasons. They show the great turning circle of Earth’s energies—the circles of everything in creation. From the tiniest bits of matter—all those revolving bits and pieces of atoms, right out to our own solar system, the galaxies…all circles…life, death, and back to life again. Round and round. You can sense all that here…circles within circles within circles…”
As Mary spoke, her hunched little frame rose straighter, higher, but then she stopped, slumped back to her former dark crouch, and giggled. “Or something like that. It’s hard to explain.”
“I think you’ve explained it beautifully,” said Anne softly.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Thank you.”
Mary smiled. “I know we’re living a bit of a crazy life—Bob and me. And who knows how long it’ll be…before we’re sucked back into the everyday things. But at the moment it feels right. We’re touching things we don’t quite understand…and it’s beautiful…”
“And you’re learning—and sharing,” I suggested.
“Yeah…we’re learning…” Mary smiled. “We’re very lucky to be able to do that.”
I wanted to give her something. A small thank-you gift. But all I could find in my pockets was a bar of chocolate. “I wish I’d got a bottle of brandy or something to keep you warm,” I said. “But maybe some chocolate…”
“Oh, thanks,” said Mary with what looked like genuine pleasure. “That’s really nice of you. I’ll save it until Bob gets back…well, some of it…”
We left her crouched down in the moonlight by the monoliths with her candles. We turned one last time as we passed out of the stone circle, and they were still flickering. Tiny warm glows in that dark, chill December night…