Category: Nature

Working with Spirits of the Garden

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Introduction

I currently have the privilege of tending a garden. My relationship with our garden is quite unique for I have lived here, in the same house with my parents, since I was four years old, with only a couple of brief periods of living away. I’m forty-four now. So I’ve been here almost forty years.

I’ve played in the garden, ignored the garden, done bits and bobs, but only since the health of my parents has deteriorated and Covid struck, have I taken gardening and building a relationship with the garden spirits seriously. I’ve had successes and failures and learnt quite a few things along the way. 

Here, I will provide an account of the processes I’ve been through and provide some guidance for others on working with spirits of the garden.

What is a Garden?

For anybody setting out to get to know the spirits of their garden, it’s helpful to know what a garden is. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is ‘an enclosed piece of ground used to grow flowers, fruit, or vegetables.’ 

Thus, a garden is born by the act of enclosing pre-existing land. Often, a garden belongs to a house and is one amongst many in a row on a street. Sometimes, gardens are created as stand-alone green spaces, such as allotments, community gardens, botanical gardens and garden areas in parks.

The History of the Land

Because a garden is an enclosed piece of ground on pre-existing land, it is helpful to get to know what the land was used for prior to its enclosure. You can do this by looking at old Ordnance Survey maps and at your local tithe map (1). 

The OS maps for 1910 and 1890 show that there was an orchard on this land. The deeds to our house record it as cherry orchard. In Lancashire, both sweet cherry (Prunus avium) and sour cherry (Prunus cerasus) were grown. In next door’s garden there is a sweet cherry tree – perhaps a descendant. Sweet cherry seedlings are always trying to grow in our garden.

The 1840 OS map and the local tithe map, from 1839, show beforehand it was meadow. It was known as Golden Bank Croft. The land belonged to Malt Kiln Cottage and Farm and was owned by Richard Palmer, who leased it to William Mayor and his son, Robert Mayor, who is listed as owning the field. The large, irregular field patterns suggest that they date back to the medieval period. 

The ‘Bank’ refers to the bank of Fish House Brook, which is culverted beneath the gardens of the houses across the road, Bank Parade. It then flows through Greencroft Valley and north to enter the river Ribble at Fish House Bridge. The source of Fish House Brook lies 100m to the south of my house. 

I thus see the presiding land spirits to be the Spirit of Fish House Brook and the Spirit of Greencroft Valley, for they are the powers who have resided here long before we spoke those names and created meadows, houses and gardens.

It is likely that Golden Bank Croft was farmed as hay meadow. The way this worked was that fields were grazed as pasture over the winter, then in spring the cattle were shut out and the grasses were let grow and cut in the summer. 

Typical species of a lowland hay meadow in Lancashire include grasses such as: sweet vernal grass (Anthoxanthum oderatum), meadow foxtail (Alopecurus pratensis), crested dog’s tail (Cynosurus cristatus), red fescue (Festuca rubra) and Yorkshire fog (Holcus lanatus) and wildflowers such as: ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), bird’s-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus), common knapweed (Centaurea nigra), yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor), great burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis), meadow vetchling (Lathrus pratensis), and meadow buttercup (Ranunculus acris). Remnants of some of the more pervasive of these species are found in our lawn and on local parks and green spaces.

I perceive the guardian spirit of my home and garden to be the former guardian of Golden Bank Meadow and the surrounding land on this side of the brook.

It is likely that, before it was enclosed as meadow, this area would have been mixed deciduous woodland, dominated by oak, with some patches of carr wood. This is suggested by the old oak trees that are remnants of former hedgerows in Greencroft Valley and by place-names such as Broad Oak, Oak Avenue, Oaklands Drive, the Oaks, Alderfield, the Carrs and Carr Wood.

The History of the Garden

The history of a house and garden is usually passed on from its previous owners. This is how we learnt our house was built during the 1940s. If you don’t have this information, you can check the Ordnance Survey maps. 

I believe our garden, when we moved in, in 1985, was close to the original design. It had a lot of conifers, shrubs and ornamental plants. All the conifers have been removed due to poor condition and my dad dug most of the plants up. 

A few things have survived. A pair of apple trees. Camellia, lilac and eschalonia that have grown to tree-like proportions. Fuchsia and astilbe.  Cloves in a pair of pots. Of my dad’s blunders only the raspberry patch remains.

When I was a child, I was far more interested in my toy horses and make-believe equine worlds than I was in the garden. I dug up the lawn to make water jumps and banks for my Playmobile cross country and show jumping competitions and ran round leaping courses made of garden canes myself.

I loved wild nature, which led me to conservation volunteering aged thirty. I didn’t care much for gardens or gardening until I developed a passion for growing native wildflowers. This expanded to include cultivated plants and fruit and vegetables when I began volunteering at Let’s Grow Preston. 

Still, I ignored our garden, as I didn’t see it as ‘mine’. This changed when Covid struck and all my volunteer work parties got cancelled. By that time, it was in a state of neglect due to the deteriorating health of my parents.

Building a Relationship with a Garden

My relationship with our garden started off thorny. Quite literally. The cultivated blackberry bushes at the top of our garden had taken over the path. I battled them back. I battled the ‘weeds’. I was angry with the garden for growing so wild and I was angry with my parents for their neglect. The spirits named me ‘Mrs Angry Gardener’. We didn’t start out very well. 

Yet, as time went on, with the help of Creiddylad (2) I learnt to listen better to the garden and its needs and to the intelligence of the plants. When my comfrey plant spread from its pot down the side by the compost bin, I allowed it to grow there to provide food for pollinators and to add to the compost. I let honesty grow toward the back of the garden. When the blackberries died, I created a fern garden on advice from Creiddylad and Gwyn (3), populating it with ferns and hart’s tongue growing elsewhere as ‘weeds’.

I replaced the flower beds with a wildflower patch, growing ox-eye daisy, ragged robin, red campion, common knapweed and foxgloves from seed. I added betony and common agrimony from an ecology colleague and blue geraniums from Let’s Grow Preston and Newgate Nursery (bees love them).

When the red campion became dominant in the wildflower patch and threatened to take over the garden, I began picking the seedlings to grow to plant in Greencroft Valley and translocating the larger plants there. 

As time has gone on, I have come to know the spirit of the garden better, if something comes up in ‘the wrong place’, to ask its purpose, where else it could go. I have become more one with the movement and succession of plants.

Prayers and Offerings

My personal approach to prayers and offerings is one of practicality and simplicity. I speak morning prayers of praise and evening prayers of thanks. I treat watering and feeding the garden as an offering, doing it prayerfully. When I place items on the compost heap at the bottom of the garden, I feel it is an offering of sorts for the fay who abide in the ferns and the lilac. 

I used to make offerings of mead to Gwyn and the garden spirits beneath one of the apple trees. When the hellebores wilted, I found out that alcohol damages trees and plants. It causes dehydration, strips protective layers and kills beneficial soil bacteria. Herbal tea now forms a more suitable alternative. I also, occasionally, offer fruit. This gives nutrients back to the ground. However, I don’t do this often, due to sightings of a brown rat.

Our spirits appreciate arrangements of stones, such as my mum’s ‘god stones’ (4), as shown by the mosses and lungwort who have grown around them.

Others might prefer more elaborate ceremonies and rituals. Always check in with the spirits first make sure that what you want aligns with what they want. 

Shamanic Journeys and Dreams

It is also possible to journey to the spirits of the garden. On my journeys, I have not come across a single ‘spirit of the garden’ who has presented in an anthropomorphic or phytomorphic form. Yet, I have heard a ‘voice’ that seems to speak with the deeper being of the wider area. 

I have been shown that I’m a mere instrument in the greater design of the land. A mid-wife and foster-mother to the plants, a nurturer, a waterer. That my existence and doings here are transient against the ancientness of this place and of its inhabitants, some who outdate humans by millions of years. 

I have been shown that willowherb (Epilobium) will never stop spreading and horse tail (Equisetum) will maintain its vast subterranean system beneath the earth for millennia. My existence here is more ephemeral than the so-called ephemeral plants who will continue in their seed whereas, with me, my line ends.

As I have built a deeper relationship with the garden, it has appeared more often in my dreams. I have dreamt the Leylandii are back again. I have dreamt strange bees and wasps. I have dreamt a pond in the middle of the back lawn that my parents will never allow but might be created by a future owner.

Presence and Listening

Of all things, I have found that the main need of our garden has been that I pay attention and listen. That, instead of being in my head, listening to my internal chatter, I am embodied and present amongst the trees, plants and creatures.

In this state, I am more at one with the garden, more attentive to its needs. I notice things better. For example, how the types of bees on the oregano – honey bee (Apis mellifera) and white-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lucorum) – differ from the types of bee on the common knapweed – red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius), common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum) and hairy-footed flower bee (Anthothora plumipes). I notice a hornet mimic hoverfly (Volucella zonaria) for the first time and wonder what its appearance means. 

Taking the time and effort to be present and listen, whether whilst gardening or sitting or standing still, for me forms the foundation of good relationship. It also opens the door to deeper mysteries and more intimate disclosures from the spirits. Thus, Blake’s ‘Heaven in a wildflower’ can be found in any garden. 

*If you enjoy my writing please consider supporting me on Patreon HERE.*

Footnotes

(1) Tithe maps were created following the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 to replace the ancient system of paying tithes in goods with monetary taxes.
(2) An ancient British and Welsh goddess of sovereignty and fertility who I perceive to be connected with flowers.
(3) Gwyn ap Nudd, ‘White son of Mist’, earlier known as Vindos, is the King of Annwn / Faerie and Creiddylad is his queen.
(4) The stones, in order, from the top left, represent Creiddylad, Nodens, Anrhuna, Vindos / Gwyn, Maponos / Mabon and Gwythyr.

The Calming of Meadowsweet

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On an un-named patch of land half a mile from my home that I know as the Meadows, meadowsweet grows along the banks of the ditches and in damp areas.

Its fluffy white flowers, with their almond essence-like scent, are unmistakable. Look a bit closer and you will see they are tiny (5 – 10mm in diameter) and grouped together in cymes with the stamens providing the fuzzy look. Its leaves, too, are striking. They are deep-veined, serrated, and arranged alternately in up to five pairs, ending in a three lobed leaflet. In some places, the flowers have gone over and seeds are forming – tight-clustered achenes.

The common name, ‘meadowsweet’, (1) derives from the Anglo-Saxon, meodu-swete ‘mead-sweetener’ referring to its use to sweeten mead. Other names include bridewort, meadwort, meadow-wort and queen of the meadow. 

There’s certainly a feminine energy about this plant. In Irish mythology, Aine, a goddess associated with the summer, love and fertility, gave meadowsweet its sweet scent. In the Welsh myths, the flower maiden, Blodeuwedd, is conjured by Gwydion from the flowers of oak, meadowsweet and broom as a bride for Lleu. Thus, we can see why it might be known as bridewort. 

Its scent and presence have a calming quality. In Irish and Scottish Gaelic, it is known as Crios Cu Chulainn ‘Cu Chulainn’s belt’. In the Irish myths, Cu Chulainn, ‘Chulainn’s Hound’, was a fearsome warrior renowned for his riastrad, ‘battle fury’. When he entered his ‘warp spasm’, he shook like a tree, his limbs changed places in his body, one of his eyes sucked in and the other fell out, and his lungs and liver ‘flapped in his mouth’. Thus, he wrecked devastation on his enemies with his living spear, the Gae Bolga.

According to oral Gaelic folklore (I haven’t managed to find a textual reference), the only thing that could calm Cu Chulainn after a battle was being bathed in a cauldron that was filled with meadowsweet by the maidens of Ulster. Afterwards, they tied a belt of meadowsweet around his waist, or he carried a sprig in his hand, its calming capacities preventing further furies. 

Although his stories are only now known in Irish and Scottish mythology, Cu Chulainn, whose early name was Setanta, might have had associations with my home county, Lancashire, where the Iron Age tribe were called the Setantii. The name has been translated as ‘the Reaping People’ (2) from the Celtic set mutated to met ‘cut, harvest’ and Andrew Breeze has argued they were not so much the harvesters of crops but the reapers of heads. This is evidenced by the large numbers of ‘bog heads’ deposited in Setantii territory.

Back in the days of war and head-hunting, it’s possible to imagine many a warrior in his, or her, battle fury being calmed by meadowsweet. Men and women who were angered walking the damp meadows and being calmed by its scent, picking a piece, weaving it into a belt, carrying it home to strew in a calming bath or on the floor of a hut, or brewing it to make a relaxing cup of tea.

There is evidence, too, that it was placed in the tombs of the dead during the Bronze Age, such as at Forteviot in Scotland and Fan Foel in Wales. Perhaps to calm the spirits, help them on their way, as it provided second sight. Inhaling the scent was said to help you to be able to see the fairies.

Meadowsweet has traditionally been used to soothe the stomach, relieve headaches and joint pain, and to calm fevers. Its calming qualities have a basis in its chemical constitution. Meadowsweet contains salicylates, such as salicin, salicylaldehyde, and methyl salicylate. These are converted into salicylic acid, a natural painkiller, in the body. In 1897, Felix Hoffman created a gentler, acetylated medication from meadowsweet and this is now known as Aspirin. The name is derived from its earlier botanical genus, Spiraea. It also contains antioxidants such as quercetin, rutin, and spiraeoside which calm inflammation and tannins that protect the digestive tract. 

Thus, when I’m feeling angry, or when I’m feeling anxious, I take a walk along the mown pathways through the Meadows and breathe in the scent of meadowsweet. I think of the ancestors who have done so before me, of Setanta and the Setantii, their forebears, those who came after. I think of the flower brides, the fairies, the Fairy King and Queen, their leadership of the dead. I think of sweetness, I think of life, I think of death. If only I could know the calm of Setanta and wear his belt around my waist.

(1) Its scientific name, Filipendula ulmaria, comes firstly from the Latin filipendula. Filum means ‘thread’ and pendulus ‘hanging’. These terms described the tubers that hang from the root. Secondly from the Latin ulmaria, ‘elm-like’ as its leaves resemble elm leaves. It was earlier known as Spirea ulmaria on the basis of its spiralling leaves and this was changed when woody shrubs were separated from soft-stemmed plants (which it is).

SOURCES

Breeze, A. ‘Three Celtic Toponyms: Setantii, Blencathra, and Pen-Y-Ghent, Northern History XLII: 1, (University of Leeds, 2006)
Buzzard, ‘The Legend of Cu Chullain’s Belt’, Buzzardbushcraft, http://www.buzzardbushcraft.co.uk/2012/04/cu-chulainns-belt.html
Ciaran Carson (transl.), The Tain, (Penguin, 2008)
Carden-Porrett, J. ‘Meadowsweet’, National Institute of Medical Herbalists, https://nimh.org.uk/herbal-resources/herb-of-the-month-8/
Howell, J. ‘Beautiful Botanicals: Meadowsweet was used to calm a Gaelic hero’s berserk battle rage’, John O’Groat Journal, https://www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk/news/beautiful-botanicals-meadowsweet-was-used-to-calm-a-gaelic-291935/
‘Meadowsweet’, The Woodland Trust’, https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/plants/wild-flowers/meadowsweet/
‘Meadowsweet’, The Hazel Tree’, https://thehazeltree.co.uk/2019/08/16/meadowsweet/
‘Meadowsweet-Herb’, Health Line, https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/meadowsweet-herb

A Study in Honesty

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I.
You are the plant who tells the truth
(as if other plants are fickle).

Your flowers are purple.
Your leaves are amplexicaul.
Your seed pods are known as siliques.

Their stubble reminds me of a dice game.

I count them – no ones, twos, threes.
I see some fours, fives, sixes,
sevens, eights, no nines.

To count in nines is just too terrifying.

II.
I was brought up to tell the truth thinking
it would lead to praise, to handclaps,

not to snotty sobbing no tissues
can stem, no pillow can smother, no word.

I did not know that truth is ugly and unflowerlike.

That your long long taproot reaches into the underworld
where the dark moons of your seeds fall and fall
and fall and fall and fall and germinate.

III.
Lunaria, you are like the moon,
waxing and waning, the call of magic
that attempts to assemble all the parts of my soul

in the dark tower of your being before the time of your fall.

The dark nun, the dark magician speaking
our truths in our tears and blood,

learning discipline and devotion
to the truths before our eyes.

V.
In your presence
we are held by our God
who is the darkness of the edges
all around us even when He is asleep or dead
haunting the shadows of the inbetween places in leafy dapples.

VI.
There are two sides to your coin, to your money pennies, to your bets.

You pose the question of how many nuns are in the void,
how many spirits of Annwn can dance
on my fingertips.

As many
as the seeds
that will fall in my garden
this year and grow and germinate

beneath the soil and beneath my skin

as I strive to make a study in honesty
through the seasons
every year.

How to Speak of a Newt

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in the twenty-first century?

Unreptilian metaphors –

white paint spots
orange nail varnish
road-marking tail

cannot capture his majesty.

When he comes to me
with his great tail-question
forefeet planted firmly on the floor

waxen crest waving like a dragon’s

and asks me to bear his progeny –
in back-leg leaf origami
to fold up our eggs

I am tempted by his
awesome belly-signature

the colour of fire the setting sun
reminding me of his salamandrine past
in ponds and pools of the Jurassic

to make his lek my dwelling place and give birth to efts –

each with their unique belly-stamp only one
of each in this ever-burning universe

with a fire-tipped tongue give them
mystical names – Sun-Spotted, Fire-Born,
Gold-Eye, Dragon Crest, Alchemist.

He forgets I am a nun – instead

I promise to renew the pond-ways,
the pond-scape, the ecology of land
and language so he, his mate, his young
will inspire poetry here on and on.

*I recently started a conservation internship at Brockholes Nature Reserve and the task of the volunteer work party on Tuesday was building habitat heaps from alder logs. Later in the day, serendipitously, Lorna Bennett, the reserve officer, found a great crested newt along with approximately 20 adult and juvenile smooth newts, 2 juvenile toads, and 5 frogs whilst moving some old compost bags. These amphibians have been placed safely into a habitat heap to hibernate over winter before they emerge in spring and hopefully head to the new ponds to breed. The ponds were created for them by LWT’s work with Natural England to remedy the decline in great crested newts.

Dragonfly Vision

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The dragonfly
his face is very nearly
only eye!’
Chisoku*

‘His face is very nearly only eye’. To look into the eyes of a dragonfly, to imagine seeing through them takes us beyond the limits of human eyesight and perception back to a more primordial way of seeing.

Unlike humans, whose eyes have only one lens, dragonflies have compound eyes. Their eyes are composed of 30,000 facets called ommatidia (from Greek ommat ‘eye’) and each has its own lens. This results in a single mosaic image, formed from many pixels of light.

Each ommatidium contains a series of light-sensitive cells called opsids. Whilst humans have only three types of opsins, allowing them to see green, red, and blue light, dragonflies have between 11 and 30. This means they see in ultra-multicolour and can perceive ultraviolet and polarised light.

Their swift judgement of the speed and direction of prey arises from them having three additional smaller eyes called ocelli, which transmit vision to the motor centres in just a fraction of a second. This is the basis of their skills as acrobatic hunters who are able to pick out a single insect from a swarm.

Their perception of time is also very different to that of humans. Whereas we see 60 images per second they see 300 images per second. This means they experience the world five times slower than us.

The earliest eyes began developing from simple eyespots – patches of photoreceptor cells – during the Cambrian explosion 500 million years ago. The first creatures to possess them were arthropods such as Fuxianhuia protensa and Anomolocaris (which, akin to dragonflies, had over 16, 700 lenses in each eye). The development of eyesight played a major role in the ‘arms race’ of the Cambrian explosion.

Dragonflies were amongst the first winged insects to evolve 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous period. That their eyes have remained unchanged suggests they have achieved a degree of perfection.

It is near-impossible to imagine seeing like a dragonfly – 30,000 pixels of light forming an ultra-multicoloured image 300 times per second. We can only guess at the brightness and intensity of their world. Apparently because the upward facing eye has receptors for only blue and UV the sky looks exceptionally bright. The longer light waves are picked up by the downward facing eye. Perhaps seeing not only more intensely but more slowly makes up for what seems like a short life to us.

Dragonflies not only look beautiful but what they see could be of a beauty far beyond human perception. In their ability to bring together what is fragmented and to be open to far more waves of light we glimpse an older and deeper way of perceiving. This might appear inaccessible until we remember that we have evolved from creatures like Fuxianhuia protensa, Anomolocaris, and Odanata (dragonflies).

The Brythonic bard, Taliesin, lists all the animals he has been – a blue salmon, a dog, a stag, a roebuck. This provides evidence for ancient British beliefs in reincarnation and may be suggestive of a shapeshifting tradition in which bards learnt to become and see through the eyes of different creatures.

For us, in the modern world, this would mean setting aside the presuppositions of our rational and scientific worldview and learning to listen to, become, and see through the eyes of the non-human world again. Perhaps, if we could relearn to see like a dragonfly, we might be able to bring together the fragments of our world in a new mosaic – a dragonfly vision- that could provide guidance for the future?

*I first saw this quote in the visitor centre at Risley Moss where I was doing a tree identification course with the Carbon Landscapes Partnership a couple of days ago.

SOURCES

Catherine Brahic, ‘Dragonfly Eyes See the World in Ultra-Multicolour’, New Scientist, https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27015-dragonfly-eyes-see-the-world-in-ultra-multicolour/ (accessed 16/11/2019)
Grrlscientist, ‘30,000 Facets Give Dragonflies a Different Perspective: The Big Compound Eye in the Sky’, Science Blogs, https://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2009/07/08/30000-facets-give-dragonflies (accessed 16/11/2019)
Kate Hazelhurst and Lisa Hendry, ‘Eyes on the prize: the evolution of vision’, Natural History Museum, https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/eyes-on-the-prize-evolution-of-vision.html (accessed 17/11/2019)
Marged Haycock (transl), Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, (CMCS, 2007)
Mashpi Lodge, ‘Dragonfly Vision’, National Geographic, https://www.mashpilodge.com/blog/dragonfly-vision/ (accessed 16/11/2019)
Roaring Earth Staff, ‘Dragonfly Experiences Time in Slow-Motion’, Roaring Earth, https://roaring.earth/dragonflies-see-time-slower/ (accessed 16/11/2019)

The Death of a Dragonfly

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Dyed he is with the
Colour of autumnal days,
O red dragonfly.
Hori Bakusui

It was an accident. Still, if I’d accidentally killed a human I’d have been jailed for murder. I’m often killing midges, greenflies, flies, as I cycle down the Guild Wheel along the Ribble to Brockholes Nature Reserve. Not on purpose of course – they just have a terrible habit of getting in my eyes, in my mouth, down my top. It’s said there were more flying insects before cyclists, cars, climate change…

I’m not sure why killing a dragonfly somehow seems worse than killing all those tiny things. I didn’t even see him. I was too busy thinking about the fantasy novel that I was planning to set in a marshland and how the flora and fauna of Brockholes, as a wetland nature reserve, might inspire me.

Thinking not listening. There was just a buzzing at my neck and a kind of crackling against my skin. Without thinking I swatted at it compulsively, then stopped in a panic, fearful of what I’d done. Looking down, for a moment I felt relief, seeing what looked like a twig before I realised it was a ruddy abdomen. Severed from it a furred red-brown thorax, two cobwebby filmy wings, and a head with two huge dark red globular eyes and three small eyes that, between them, didn’t see me coming.

I didn’t know what he was right then, that he was a he, or a common darter. Only that I’d killed a dragonfly. I laid the broken pieces at the side of the cycle way with an apology to dragonfly kind and rode onward more slowly, more aware of other ruddy darters rising from where they were basking on the path. After I’d arrived, locked up my bike, they haunted me for the short period I was there. Flying in front of me, landing on the wooden walkways and handrails.

One, in particular, caught my eye. Beholden by the huge round portals of his eyes I drowned in the utter inadequacy of not knowing what he was thinking. Did he know I was a murderer? Did he know what I was? Could he sense my awkward reaching? My overall impression was one of curiosity. That it seemed likely he was thinking dragonfly thoughts distant from my own – trying to place this gigantic monster with its small eyes within his brief sunlit world of eating and flying and mating.

Dragonflies are old. The oldest fossils date back to the Carboniferous period – 350 million years ago. They spend most of their lives as nymphs, living for up to four years in muddy waters. They then crawl up the stem of a plant and shed their nymph-skin, emerging as dragonflies, leaving behind the exuvia. In the brief six months of their adult life they feed on smaller flying insects and find a mate, in an acrobatic display forming a spectacular mating wheel, then afterwards the female lays her eggs on the leaves of plants or in the water. Death follows shortly and the life cycle begins again.

It’s impossible to know if that dragonfly had fulfilled his life’s purpose before I killed him. And, of course, in that all-too-human way that has reduced the earth and its creatures to resources, I’m searching for a meaning, like nature is here to teach us lessons. I can’t help it. That’s human nature.

And it’s pretty obvious, slow down, listen, maybe just maybe I’m heading off on the wrong path trying to write a fantasy novel about an imaginary marshland when our existing wetlands need our voices. Making up new creatures when it may be more valuable to introduce people to Sympetrum striolatum ‘common darter’, Sympetrum sanguineum ‘ruddy darter’, Anax imperator ‘emperor dragonfly’.

This is leading me to think that, rather than writing second world fantasy, I might be best off writing a novelset in this landscape, but further back in time. Not only before the wetlands, the marshes, the peat bogs, the lakes, were drained off, but before the people lost their spiritual relationship with the land.

I’ve long been drawn to the archaeological evidence for the ancient marsh-dwellers in my local area. During the Romano-British period they were known as the Setantii ‘The Dwellers in the Water Country’ but had lived here far longer. Here, on Penwortham Marsh (now drained) and not far from the river Ribble (now moved) they had a Bronze Age Lake Village evidenced by the remains of a wooden platform, dug-out canoes, a bronze spearhead, 30 human skulls, and skulls of aurochs and deer. There were numerous other settlements such as those beside the great lakes Marton Mere and Martin Mere (now drained), wooden trackways such as Kate’s Pad, and the (now lost) Port of the Setantii.

If I was to write about that time, rather than making up critters and magic and gods and monsters, I would be able to draw upon the real magic of an animistic and shamanistic culture rooted in a lived relationship with the ‘water country’ – its reeds and rushes, its wetland birds, its dragonflies and damselflies. With the spirits of the ancestors, gods we know throughthe Romans, such as Belisama and Nodens, and those who are unknown such as the goddess I know as Anrhuna, Mother of the Marsh.

That dragonfly was one of her children perhaps. She who has been here as the marshland since, at least, the thaw of the Ice Age and thousands of years of water country, these last four centuries of its draining off, and is still here in the last remnants preserved by wetland nature reserves such as Brockholes.

Would it be too very human to read, in an unlucky accident, a message from a goddess?

O red dragonfly,
Colour of autumnal days,
Dyed he is with the

Mother of the Marsh
Returned to mud and water
Rest well O red one.

***

Those who follow this blog will note this event has led me to returning to its old name ‘From Peneverdant’. This was the name of my hometown of Penwortham in the Doomsday Book and signals a homecoming from an exodus through Welsh mythology and Annwn. It makes sense in relation to my lifelong dedication to Gwyn, here, in January.