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Tread not the bluebell

Take care you not bend a single stem

For the May Mother dotes on her blooms

She rises up in fiercest wrath

And she knows every door to dreams

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She is not unkind to those who long for rest. The mountains, the moorlands, the ancient heath, she cradles all who dream beneath the vaulting sky.

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The last snow

Tired and dry

Drinks the air

They say she always takes a life with her

By debt or transgression

We do not know

But these

They close their eyes in silence

And with flesh incorruptible

Her saints, her promised children

Go to their glory in mist

"Mae'r eira olaf, amdo angau. "

"The last snow, a burial shroud."

- old Llangwener adage

#Llangwener

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Some are twilight creatures only

In half dark they pass through doorways of shade

Dusky shades of cobalt and brief

They only come to fill the space

-For Day and Night cannot touch

Though always they are lovers

#Llangwener

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"Frankly, no," retorted Ceri. "A village is not made of people. Or at least not this one. It's made of stone and of the memories of stone...of what the wind brought in with it and what was left after the rain drained away. We are born and then die, but the sheep have more right than we do. They belong to this land. The ewes teach their daughters, and they know the best places to die. Some of us stay rooted, but our children - they left when they got bored." She leaned in, and the fire made her cold eyes come alive. "But the stone still remains, waiting - as always... and dreaming its own dreams."

#Llangwener

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'The Woman with the Candle' (detail) by Cornelis Visscher II, c. 1643 - 1658

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Stream by Henrik Hansen

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Poor Sir James, Sweet Sir James

Stay and play with us another game

None walk the old road at night

We speak not in sport, we speak not in spite

For none walk the old road at night

The wind cannot answer, the earth will not weep

Our river is hungry, and our dead do not sleep

- from 'Poor James Courtney', local pub ballad

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forest park in the fog

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Flowers in the Churchyard.

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"Beneath these stones

Sleeping bones

Slate and crystal, blood and memories

The mountain dreams

And so it seems

We rest in the shadow of buried gods"

"O dan y cerrig hyn

Esgyrn cwsg

Lechen a grisial, gwaed ac atgofion

Mae'r mynydd yn breuddwydio

A felly mae'n ymddangos

Gorphwyswn yng nghysgod Duwiau claddedig"

- Mari Jones

Eisteddfod: Llangwener, Ionawr 2024

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Dancing Fairies, 1866 by Johan August Malmström (Swedish, 1892–1901)

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Forest Creatures III by Patxi Pérez

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by llumsdelartic

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They say storms like these only happen once in a hundred years...but the voices raging over the river rock and the ripping fingers of these winds - they grow more familiar with each year. They scream of broken oaths, of guardians betrayed, of sacred laws dashed upon a fruitless modernity.

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They say She moves in winter twilight,

Kissing away the last of the weak sun's breath.

And now languidly stretches her luminous, searing limbs, heavy...bloodless.

"I've missed you, Lover..."

Then the vixen cried

And all went still.

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