by Wendy Hawkin | Jul 24, 2017 | healing, Ireland, journal, mythology
I do believe in Faeries. It’s true. And not just because I am named after Wendy Darling in Peter Pan. Or because I write urban fantasy. Faeries or Spirits or Angels (whatever you want to call them) exist beside and around and between us. They see and hear us, and sometimes answer our prayers.
This is a true story.
I arrived at my AirBnB late on Saturday after a full day. I’d driven from Jampa Ling in the north of Co Cavan, down to Uisneach (which is the naval of Ireland and close to Athlone). After touring the site with Marty, the amazing storyteller, I drove on to Navan and finally found my BnB (4+ hours of driving and it was only my second day driving on the left, seated on the right–a tad stressful).
The host was lovely and accommodating and the room looked lovely. But I suffer (and I mean suffer) from multiple chemical sensities/allergies and the house was awash with scented products. I lay in bed all night, taking Benadryl, terrified that I was going to need my epipen. I dozed off around five or six for maybe an hour. I mentioned the problem to him the next morning but there wasn’t much that could be done. The chemicals from scented laundry detergents, fabric softeners, and plug-in air fresheners cannot be magically removed. So, I went off to explore the Hill of Tara wondering what to do. I’d booked three nights there, you see.
Now, Tara is a magical place, the Seat of 142 High Kings of Ireland. The entrance to the Otherworld. The Lia Fail or Stone of Destiny brought to Eiru by the Tuatha de Danaan (the Sidhe) rests here. And beneath the Faerie mounds are carved Neolithic stones with ancient symbols.
I wandered the fields as long as I could feeling horrible. My tongue was swelled and tingling and the antihistamines weren’t alleviating it at all. I was frightened, to tell you the truth–anaphyalaxis is terrifying. It also creates brain fog, so I can’t think straight. This happened to me a few weeks ago and it took days to go away. I was afraid to go back to the BnB, yet I was supposed to stay there again that night and the next. I breathed in the wind and sun, hoping it would magically cleanse me. Tara is largely pasture lands and mounds, a dog-walkers dream, and it’s still run like a farm, so you can wander the grassy vales for hours.
At last, I saw a few people off in a far corner of a field. They were photographing a Faerie Tree.
I took the only scrap of fabric I had in my bag–which happened to be a dark red lens cleaner–and tied it to the branch asking with my all heart for the angels or the spirits of this sacred place to help me with my health…to please just help me feel well. And then I left.
On the way home, I passed a restaurant/motel called Tara House and thought… hmmmm. I turned the car around, went back and inquired about a room. They had a room, but it wasn’t quite right either. You have to understand that once my immune system goes berserk, I react to everything. What a “normal” person might smell as a two, I smell as a TWENTY! On top of all the chemicals, I am allergic to dust and mold. I told the woman what was happening and she said, “Ah you’re suffering. Have you tried Josey’s across the way?” “Where?” I said. “Show me.” And she did.
I left my car there and walked across the road. Josey was out in the driveway. She had a room for two nights. She took me upstairs and showed it to me. Suddenly, I felt like a princess in a faerie tale. She understood all about chemical sensitivity and said she’d cook me an Irish fry-up in the morning that was gluten and dairy free. Oh my! I almost cried. I told her that she was my angel.
I couldn’t believe it. And yet… Manifestation is rapid-fire magic!
I went back, packed up my things, and left a note to explain. And then I came back to Bothar Alainn
Today I am much better. The swelling’s gone down and I was able to explore Newgrange and Knowth…two other places made sacred by the faeries. So, remember, when you need them, the spirits really do come through. But you must believe.
by Wendy Hawkin | Jul 23, 2017 | Ireland, journal, nature, travel
The Golden Way
There are some lovely walks around the Jampa Ling Tibetan Buddhist Centre in Co Cavan. One of my favourite Sacred Web songs is a Tree Chant where the names of trees from around the world are repeated. I found myself singing this as I meandered the forested trail to the lake.
My favourite trees are old deciduous trees. Beech, ash, oak… And they all grow here intermingling with wild ferns, holly, and ivy. It reminds me of Robert Graves’ work in The White Goddess.
One spring I will come to see the bluebells!
Wild Shamrocks!
I did not expect to find wild shamrocks in the woods at Jampa Ling, but there they were, pushing through the ivy and covering the mossy nurse logs. Shamrocks are a type of wood sorrel, belonging to the Oxalis genus.
The old beech tree guards the path to the lake. The sign says: “this ancient tree casts a canopy so dense that no other trees can thrive under it leaving an area as you see free from undergrowth. Nature has created here for us a beautiful quiet place of reflection and contemplation.”
Not long after you reach the lake.
In the field behind the centre I discovered this massive old grandmother Oak, the Druid tree. Ah, she is beautiful. I wanted to climb into her arms and sleep.
by Wendy Hawkin | Jul 23, 2017 | Ireland, journal, nature, travel
Several dogs hang out at Jampa Ling. I am told that the Venerable Pachen Otrul Rinpoche, who is the spiritual director of Jampa Ling, calls them the dog sangha. Ruffus, the border collie cross (wider in the middle and darker) is the neighbour’s dog but appears at the centre every day before morning puja and stays until evening puja is over. His family now call him Buddha Dog.
One day, one of the guests discovered a black and white border collie (longer hair with a white ruff) on the road and thought it was Ruffus. It wasn’t. The dog had been abandoned but came to live at the centre. That is how Pema arrived here.
Ruffus and Pema are the official greeters and walk guests around the centre. Pema, a typical border collie, lies in the grass waiting for a stick to fly and barks at the wheels on my suitcase.
Pickles belongs to Evelyn and is ever so sweet and shy. I love that I can step outside and be immersed in this wonderful dog love!
Rubio, a gorgeous four-year-old golden retriever/lab cross belongs to Fidelma. When I emerged Wednesday morning, Rubio was waiting outside and went for a walk with me to the stupa. Rubio is always ready for cuddles and walks. The healing dogs of the Jampa Ling Sangha.
“May all sentient beings be happy and free of suffering.”
by Wendy Hawkin | Jul 1, 2017 | Book Review, Ireland, writing and publishing
Lake of Sorrows, Loughnabrone, does not appear to be a real place (at least it doesn’t exist beyond Erin Hart’s fictional novel) but County Offaly is, and I am going there in a few weeks. I reread this 2004 archaeological murder mystery in advance because I’m researching the landscape and Iron Age Ireland for a Hollystone Mysteries spin-off. Offaly is the omphalos of Ireland, lying as it does in the ancient province of Leinster, centred between Galway in the west and Dublin in the east. It is:
…the ancient region known as the Mide, the centre. It was a place that had been ascribed all sorts of magical attributes, the powerful locus represented by the central axes of the crosses on Bronze Age sundiscs, from a time when the world had been divided up into four quadrants, North, South, East, and West, and a shadowy central place, which, because it was not There, had to be Here (9)
It is a land of mountains, wild lands, and rivers, and also of bog. In fact, the Bord na Móna boglands figure into this crime novel, as do those treasures of the past that are occasionally unearthed by a turf cutter. Or by a couple of brothers.
Sometimes it’s treasure; sometimes it’s a body. In the case of Hart’s novel, the Brazil brothers, Dominic and Danny, unearth a large Iron Age hoard in 1977 while working at the Loughnabrone Bog: “numerous axe-heads, several amber bead necklaces, a scabbard and sword hilt, and twelve bronze trumpets” (15). (The Celtic tribes used to scare the bejesus out of their enemies by blaring trumpets in battle.) Complying with the laws of Treasure Trove, the appropriate people are notified and the treasure is shipped to the National Museum in Dublin. At least, most of it. When Danny leaves for Australia, not long after with his reward money, no one is suspicious; until, twenty-odd years later, his body is unearthed in the bog.
American forensic pathologist, Norin Gavin, is in Loughnabrone to examine an ancient bog body in situ. Strangled with a triple knotted leather cord, the man also had his throat cut, and was drowned. A ritual triple murder associate with Iron Age Celts? Most likely. Then, within minutes of her examination, Danny Brazil’s body appears:
the skin was dark brown and the features slightly flattened, the nose smashed to one side, but the eye sockets, skull vault and jawline clearly marked it as human. One skeletal, clawlike hand was curled into a fist and raised above the head…wearing a wristwatch (24).
Danny is clearly no Iron Age sacrifice, though he appears to have endured a ritual killing. Nora, and her lover, archaeologist Cormac Maguire, become embroiled in a complex murder investigation that involves, naturally, several other murders. Well-researched and crafted, what I am most curious about are the Iron Age references and the landscape of the bog. For example, Nora’s first experience on bogland–one I do not intend to replicate–is to be caught outside her car during a dust storm. Suddenly, a stop at the side of a country road turns sinister:
The dust cloud engulfed her, along with the road and the vast expanse of bog on either side, closing her eyes, filling her nostrils and throat with stinging peat. Suddenly unable to guage any distance, she ran blindly until her right knee banged hard into the car’s rear bumper. The glancing pain took her breath away. She didn’t dare open her lips to cry out, but limped around to the driver’s side and climbed in closing the door against the dust that tried to follow her (10).
Note to self: do not stop the rental on the side of a country road, no matter how pastoral it appears, or how long it’s been since the last pit stop!
Hart makes reference to several Iron Age artifacts. The Broighter Hoard was discovered in Derry in 1896 and is exquisite. Quite possibly, these golden gifts were votive offerings to a sea divinity and date back to the first century BC.
La Tène neck ring
Broighter Hoard
How many artifacts are discovered and remain in private collections? And if they are loved and cherished is that such a bad thing? For people like me, yes. I can’t wait to spend time at the National Museum of Archaeology in Dublin admiring those long buried clues to our cultural past. How can we construct a life for a people who left no written records? That is what I am about to discover.
by Wendy Hawkin | Mar 17, 2017 | Ireland, journal, writing and publishing
Here it is St. Patrick’s Day, and me with no words from Faerie. Tragic and ironic, that is. I decided, under the circumstances, it was best to let my Irish witch speak.
This is a scene from To Charm a Killer. Maggie’s just been packed off to Ireland for safe keeping and met up with Primrose, her fey protector. The two girls are lunching at The Quays on Shop Street in Galway. And, wouldn’t I like to be there myself today. Enjoy the memory and the moment. Sláinte.
Primrose whisked off her cap as they settled into one of the wooden snugs and Maggie was startled to see that her shaved head was tattooed in colourful swirling symbols. Seeing her fascination, Primrose bowed forward to reveal the heart of the design—an intricately patterned mandala etched on the top of her skull. Three violet trees with intertwining roots formed the centre, while their branches connected in a circular knot. Between the trees were coiled spirals in emerald green. Another circle of knots wrapped around the first and split near the base of her skull into two trails that merged at the top of her spine.
“That’s amazing. Does it go all the way down your back?”
“Aye, and ends in a serpent’s tail. St. Patrick did not rid Éireann of all the snakes. A few of us survived.”
PS. I just received a beautiful email from a woman who finished reading To Charm a Killer this morning and loved it. My heart sings when I hear such kind and beautiful words. We are all entwined in the same Celtic knot, don’t you think?
by Wendy Hawkin | Mar 3, 2017 | Ireland, journal, mythology
I think of Yeats often these days. Perhaps, I conjure him in the dreamtime and we meet in hazy green fields beyond time and place. He is one of my muses and seeps into my work.
When we visited the ruins of Lady Augusta Gregory’s estate at Coole Park in Gort, Ireland, a few years ago, I wrote her a letter. A flame, for the Irish Literary Revival, she co-founded the Abbey Theatre with WB Yeats and Edward Martyn.
AE, John Millington Singe, George Bernard Shaw, and Yeats, many of the Irish giants of literature and theatre, came here to socialize and create in the lush lands by the turloughs. They carved their initials on a tree that still stands. Lough Cuil is now an explorable nature reserve of 400 hectares. Yeats wrote several poems here including “The Wild Swans at Coole.” His Norman tower house, Thoor Ballylee, is nearby.
A Letter to Herself
It is August at Coole.
Black cows break from ivy-braided trees, crisscross our path,
and peer from leafy bowers in the seven woods,
While in the stonewalled pasture, a big-racked buck grazes lazily
among his harem.
Wild cows and docile deer. Nature topsy-turvy —
Like Ireland.
There are no wild swans — not nine and fifty — not two, not even one.
But it is only August at Coole.
Horseflies harangue us, freed from swaying heads of purple loosestrife
Where is this still brimming water?
The tide is out.
Sunlight shimmers waves and ripples through my lens and
distant trees appear as shaggy skulking arrows;
We are alone here on the strand.
Tara writing poetry on her Burren rock, and I, courting the ghost of Yeats
It is August at Coole.
Augusta Gregory has passed away, Bohemian crown askew,
Royal Lady, heiress to the unimagined, patroness of poets,
Poet herself and playwright, dearest friend and grand mum,
Molding all in ink-stained hands. But no Victoria.
Desperate Creatrix. The centre did not hold.
Your home demolished in the widening gyre,
Anarchy for the Republic —
All that remains are Yeats’ immortal words on plastic posts.
His vision revealed. All’s changed.
Arrows point tourists here and there through your memories
Your autograph tree now numbered and analyzed, imprisoned behind
Iron bars, tagged and martyred like Patrick Pearse —
Do you mind, Great Lady?
People still come, to know, to feel, to walk in the footsteps of
Poets and playwrights: Yeats and Synge, Æ, Shaw, and Auden.
Children play football and hang like fools, dogs chase sticks,
Dirty your walkways, and life spirals on.
Lough Cuil is Irish now.
Comforted by stone and sea, sun, rain, and western winds
Stories resurrected in the Gaeltacht. This you must love.
And your small patch of Ireland breathing still, a sanctuary of green —
No withered boughs.
I miss him too, but feel him somehow in the worded wind, and
My throat aches …
Yeats.
This is August at Coole.
