A mini-epic of the Celtic hinterlands

right through to Here - and Now.

 

Once, when the great ice slabs slunk towards the greeny skies to the north, smoothing the ragged peaks

to the bare shoulders of today;

when rivulets, streams and rivers

wore their path through the foothills

draining the receding glaciers,

carving gullies and deep ravines

where the birch and sapling then sprang

with lush bog and thicket

for creature and bird.

Then man….

 

….following the herds tundra-wards,

following the estuaries and valley-veins

upwards towards the wolfy wilds

where they found refuge and shelter

in these same dells and glens

alongside all the waterways.

 

Time-passing, tracks and foot-paths

traced between their clearings

and secluded watersheds.

Nomads, hunter-gatherers, wanderers;

then explorers - trading, settling,

or ravished by pillaging invaders;

hermits, shaman, itinerants and outlaws

treading these ancient ways

these same sunken lanes

and hilltop entrenchments;

all clearly detectable

  - motte, bank, mound -

even now.

 

And here,

on this Druid spot where great stones

marked the sacred enclosures, 

set with their archaic and starry wisdoms

came fiery preachers and missionaries

toppling those pagan structures,

erecting their chapels and churches

 - howesoever of wattle and daub -

in their stead.

 

In Time.

A church steeple or tower.

A bell. A graveyard.

Onto, a vicarage and school-room,

with medieval Glebe and cobbled drive,

it’s crab-apple, berry, sloe, nut

 and native damson-hedged boundaries;

A perennial spring, gravity-run.

A yew tree marker.

 A broken lintel, tile or pot,

cracked hinges and rusting harrows:

 - signs of man's passing.

 

The land softly moulds to the elements

along with the mark of its creatures

and the footprint of Man;

the evidence of its shaping

embedded in every root and rock,

breathing it’s heritage in soil and tree

the echoes of bygone voices and lives

still resonant.

 

So the saintly one, Afan

murdered by roving Viking pirates

so the stories go,

in a nearby water-meadow, downstream;

as his stately tomb, Lombardic scripted,

in this lonesome upland parish

avers, bearing his name;

as does this patch, this place here,

“‘the bushes of the saint” - saintsbush.

Perth-y-sant;

ordinance surveyed and archived -

where this old vicarage site

with its fallen timbers and stones,

tales of rebuildings,

it’s cyclically swept-away footbridge,

the records new and old

of fires and massive ancient oaks

of duck-races and war-time heroes,

of old men remembering trout upstream,

 - a locally fabled bath

….and now, we,

more modern nomads, come,

stepping lightly,

Ah, this is the spot for us!”

And settle.

 

One day, while clearing a hillside

smothered with bracken and bramble

scrabbled with hazel and  hawthorn,

frequented by squirrels and hares

there emerged a great monolith

fallen, grown over, submerged in silt.

Unearthed and uprighted

 - by dint of a monster machine -

resurrected under the Ash and  Alders,

newly reborn into the light of day,

where the great kites swirl overhead.

soon, to be carpeted with wild daffodils.

“That is a worked stone”

said the visiting archaeologist.

Just so.

“There are others, inside the bank”

said the visiting Seer, Merlin’s own.

“Ah!  let them be!

One is enough, to remember.”

 

So today,

Go down the tunnel of rustling trees

along the old Way!

There, the sound of voices, laughter,

a glimpse of hammock and swing,

the smell of hay and woodsmoke,

chortling of the tumbling brook

by the newly standing stone,

and bare limbs splashing in the river.

 

As ago.