A Title? for this mess?

 It’s getting harder and harder to come up with an interesting blogpost. I don’t go out socially, I only meet people very casually on a walk, when we stand and shout at each other from a distance, or the people who come to help around house and garden. The main topic of conversation is Covid and vaccinations, who’s had one and who’s still waiting. I’ve had one, the first of the two Astra Zeneca ones, which are now found to be unproven for the over 65s in European countries. I had mine last Saturday and apart from a sore arm I’ve had no ill effects so far.

So, would you like me to tell you that we had a lovely morning and a very wet afternoon? No, why would you want to know? Would you like me to tell you about the several virus mutations appearing on several continents, two of them in the UK alone? No, you already know that if you are even semi-conscious. Would you like to know that a small bird flew into the window but then must have recovered and flown off again because I couldn’t see a body. (Unless, of course, a raptor chased it and snapped it up for dinner). 

But here’s something which might interest you: shall I tell you that I’ve put on several kilos during the lockdown lockup and decided to go easy on the chocolate and drink less wine in the new year? If I tell you that I lasted less than a week would you be interested? No, of course not, why would you.

So, how about this, seeing that today, the 2nd of February, is Candlemas,’St Mary’s Feast of the Candles’,(’Mariae Lichtmess’ in Germany), officially the Feast of the Purification and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. Today therefore, in the Catholic Church, lights and candles are blessed and candlelit services and processions are held. In Germany these candles are lit throughout the year during times of sickness and stress and personal hardship. Just the thing for an epidemic, methinks.

Candlemas Day, plant beans in the clay

Put candles and candlesticks all away.

By this season it has grown light enough to do most ‘inside work’ without candles, the verse continues. Really? Not where I live unless people stop ‘inside work' at 5 o’clock. I hardly do any work at all in winter, inside or out, does that mean I don’t deserve light? Sometimes I wish I weren’t quite as lazy and unmotivated, had a bit more oomph. At other times I find laziness suits me.

Of course, today is also Groundhog Day, a weather forecaster not only in the US, although different kinds of animals are used as forecasters, a hedgehog might be the animal being so very unkindly roused from its hibernation in Germany.

If Candlemas Day bring snow and rain

Winter is gone, and won’t come again.

If Candlemas Day be clear and bright

Winter will have another flight.

And if your Candlemas Day brings both sun and rain, as mine did, what is the prognosis then? Wishy-washy weeks? 

And finally, a bit of advice:

A good farmer should have, on Candlemas Day,

half his turnips and half his hay.

Sorry, I have no idea what that means. Also, for the life of me, I cannot see what possible comments this post could provoke.

Advent Diary, day 15 - Sailors’ Warning, Christmas Cards and the Dangers of Cats

 I should never watch more than 2 hours of TV at night and I certainly should not then go to bed and read a thriller until 1.30 in the morning; a fail-safe recipe for a disastrous night.  I must have slept in snatches, but I looked at the clock every hour on the hour until 6.30 this morning when I finally had enough and got up.

I dawdled and dithered before drawing the curtains but when I did, this is what I saw. Shakespeare said of such a sky: 

“ Like a red morn that ever yet betokened,

Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,

Sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds.

Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.”

Hard to believe that a spectacular morning like this will soon turn into a wet and miserably grey day, even though there are plenty of metereological reasons. A German saying goes: Red dawn fills the well, red dusk will dry it.

Still, the miserable day had a good outcome, we finished writing our christmas cards. Music, a glass of Gluehwein and some chocolates were all part of the pleasure.

Finally, a bit of advice: Even in cold weather, beware of taking cats to bed for warmth.

‘As this beast has been familiarly nourished of many, so have they paid dear for their love, being requited with the loss of their health and sometimes of their life......for it is most certain that the breath and savour of Cats consume the radical humour and destroy the lungs and therefore they which keep their Cats with them in their beds have the air corrupted, and fall into severe Hekticks and Consumptions.’

Edward Topsell, History of Four-footed Beasts, 1607

You have been warned! Hecticks and Consumptions. Nasty!

St Luke’s Summer

Now is the tolling time

Between the falling and the buried leaf;

A solitary bell

Saddens the soft air with the last knell of summer.

Gone is the swallow’s flight, the curving sheaf;

The plums are bruised that hung from a bent bough,

Wasp-plundered apples in the dew-drenched grass

Lie rotting now.

Doomed with the rest, the daggered hawthorn bleeds

Bright crimson beads

For the birds’ feast.

Gone are the clusters of ripe cherries,

Tart crabs and damsons where a bullfinch tarried,

Only the camp-fire coloured rowan berries

Blaze on.

Now is the time of slow, mist-hindered dawns,

Of sun that stains

Weeds tarnished early in the chilling rains,

Of coarse-cut stubble fields

Where starlings gather, busy with the scant grain,

And with hoarse chattering proclaim

The spent season.

Now are the last days of warm sun

That fires rusted bracken on the hill;

And mellows the deserted trees

Where the last leaves cling, sapless, shrunk, and yellow.

A robin finds some warm October bough

Recapturing his song

Of Aprils gone,

And tardy blackbirds in the late-green larch

Remember March.

Phoebe Hesketh 

St Luke’s-tide lovers exchange tokens and set the wedding date.

It was anciently very customary  . . . .to break a piece of Gold or Silver in token of a verbal contract of marriage and promises of love; one half whereof was kept by the woman, while the other part remained with the man.

Brand Popular Antiquities 1813

Candlemas

Giovanni Bellini, 1460-1464, Galleria Querini Stampalia, Venice

February has been the month of purification since Roman times;  Februalia was the Roman festival of ritual purification . The festival, which is basically one of Spring washing or cleaning (associated also with the raininess of this time of year) is old, and possibly of Sabine origin. According to Ovid, Februare as a Latin word which refers to means of purification derives from an earlier Etruscan word referring to purging.

The Roman month Februarius ("of Februa," whence the English February) is named for the Februa/Februatio festival.  (Excerpts from Wikipedia)

February was also the month when the housewife traditionally started her ‘spring cleaning’ of home and hearth;  the days lengthened and showed up dust and grime which remained invisible during the dark months. German folk wisdom  claims that: come New Year the day has grown by a rooster’s step, at Three Kings (Epiphany) by the leap of a deer and a whole hour by Candlemas. 

On the 2nd of February the Catholic church celebrates ‘St Mary’s Feast of the Candles’, officially the Feast of the Purification and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.  The aged Simeon prophesied that Jesus would be ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles’; on this day, therefore, lights and candles are blessed at a candle lit service. There are records which show that the custom of blessing the year’s supply of candles was already in existence in the tenth century in the area of the Lower Rhine. A normally dark church was transformed into a sea of light, surely an awe inspiring sight for the peasants of the time. After the service the candles were carried around the church in procession; great care was taken that the flames remained alight, because that meant the year would be a good one for bees.

Sacred and household candles were blessed alike; the beekeeper took his burning candle to his hives to thank the bees for providing him with the necessary wax and ask them for a good harvest of honey for the coming year;  the husband, as head of the household, took his candle and dribbled three drops, in the shape of a triangle, into the clothes of each member of the household, making the sign of the cross. This was to protect them from all evil, particularly witchcraft and magic. Another custom was for the father to dribble three drops on to a piece of bread, which he would give his children to eat and show to the animals in the stables.

The candlemas candle continued to be of great importance throughout the year; it was lit whenever danger to life and limb, the home, animals and property threatened. It was lit at the birth of new life and at the end of a life, both of which were natural events happening within the family home in those days.

Candlemas, like many saints' days, also provided the countryman with weather adages; farmers and shepherds preferred the day to be cold and rough:

If Candlemas Day bring snow and rain

Winter is gone, and won’t come again.

If Candlemas Day be clear and bright

Winter will have another flight.

Around 1700 a shepherd on the Lower Rhine was said to watch the weather on Candlemas morning with particular attention;  a proverb said that he’d rather see the wolf than the sun in the sheep pen. 

At least as early as the 1840s, German immigrants in Pennsylvania had introduced the tradition of weather prediction that was associated with the hedgehog (der Igel) in their homeland. Since there were no hedgehogs in the region, the Pennsylvania Germans adopted the indigenous woodchuck (a name derived from an Indian word), aka the groundhog. The town of Punxsutawney, some 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, has played up the custom over the years and managed to turn itself into the center of the annual Groundhog Day, particularly after the 1993 movie starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. Each year, people gather to see if a groundhog dubbed "Punxsutawney Phil" will see his shadow after he emerges from his burrow. If he does, the tradition says there will be six more weeks of winter. (Phil has a rather dismal 39% rate of accuracy for his predictions.)