BEGINNINGS: MIDWINTER stories

Introduction and Contents

BEGINNINGS – in search of origins, ancestors and their beliefs, stories and cultural practice.

Performed at PCL Exhibitionists, 1999, Gadigal country

Masks, costumes and artwork by I. Kindness

Performance of ancestral stories from the North…of origin…of creation…of Cessair…of the Norns... [1]


dance, music and ritual

the work of the bards, filidh, seanchai, ollamh, druids, sharmans and seers of my heritage


and remembering with love my ancestors, Elizabeth Pulley and Eliza Ann Miller


Final story:

“There is a building, a monument, a tomb, on a hill overlooking a river in Ireland...

Once surrounded by smaller domestic buildings, shelters, hearths, pits, signs of life over 4,000 years ago.

 The door has been sealed shut with heavy stone slaps

In front a large stone decorated with spirals in two’s and three’s and a mark indicating the direction of the door

            Behind another

                        Beside another

 Above the door a small slit-like opening in the roof, hidden, protected.

At midwinter, on the shortest day of the year, at sunrise, the first rays of the sun hit this secret place and a pencil thin beam of light makes its way slowly down the passageway to the very centre.

For seventeen minutes this beam lights up the darkness and then retreats the way it came

Once a year, for three days, it makes this journey at the day’s beginning then disappears altogether for another year.

 Once a year, at midwinter

                        Midwinter

                        The time of magic        

                        The time of conception

                        That hidden unseen, unnoticed change when life begins

                                    and the potential to be...is”

© A. Maie 1999

Introduction and Contents


[1]  Stories of origin from Lebor Gabala Erenn, Part 1; The Christian Bible, Chpt 1 & 2; Aristophanes, 'Birds'; Hesoid; The Kalevala, Poem 1; Lebor Gabala Erenn, Part II, 'Cessair';  Voluspa;  Assyrian/Babylonian text.




  

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