The Year's Midnight - Celia Rees

' 'TIS the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ; The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world's whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk, Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph. '

A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day, Being The Shortest Day - John Donne

For John Donne, the shortest day was St Lucy's Day, the 12th December. For us it is the 21st. We are a day away, but as I write this and a dismal afternoon turns more drear and the light fades, it feels as if it is already here. The Winter Solstice has always been seen as significant, recognised all over the world and celebrated as a time of re-birth, a time of hope and re-affirmation as the year turns back towards the light.

Short days and long nights have always made this a good time to read. What else is there to do, once Christmas is over? It's a chance to withdraw from the world for a little while, curl up with a good book and maybe a glass of something, and read in front of the fire. I guess everyone has their favourite seasonal reading, their favourite Christmas stories and poems and there have been some memorable children's books set at this time of the year. When I was a child, I didn't particularly enjoy the stories of Beatrix Potter and I didn't like Alison Uttley's Little Grey Rabbit. I preferred the rougher charm of her Sam Pig and Brock the Badger. My favourite story from the Tales of Sam Pig was The Christmas Box, and my favourite part of that story was when Brock the Badger goes to the Christmas Fair. The light is going and no-one notices a 'little brown man' going from stall to stall with his silver penny, buying things for his wards, Sam, Tom, Bill and Ann. I used to look out for him in country markets, late on a December afternoon. I still do.

'Miracles happen on Christmas Eve', Brock says, and maybe it is true. it is a magical time of the year when it is possible to believe strange things could happen, like badgers going to market, so it is little wonder that two of the best children's fantasies ever written are set at this time of the year. John Masefield's hugely influential Box of Delights is exactly what it says on the cover. First published in 1935, every subsequent British fantasy writer owes an immense debt to Masefield's imagination and his inventiveness. The book is set in deep mid-winter with the hero, Kay, returning from boarding school. He meets a mysterious Punch and Judy man, the owner of the box, who then entrusts it to Kay to avoid it falling in to the hands of the evil Abner Brown. The gripping, powerful story unfolds over the few days Christmas. The weather and the feeling of dislocation, of being out of normal time, that is often present during this period, add significantly to the power of the fantasy and the sense of danger and isolation.








The other book on my Solstice reading list is Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising. Another brilliantly inventive, original and influential fantasy, like the Box of Delights, it takes place over Christmas and New Year and deals with the battle between the forces of darkness and the forces of the light. Perhaps both books are so powerful and convincing because they tap into the atavistic fear that fuels our midwinter festivals, rituals and celebrations, a fear that goes back thousands of years, the terror that the warmth and light may never return and we will be kept in a state of freezing darkness. M. R. James used to tell his ghost stories at Christmas and that seems entirely right and fitting. The impulse to read and tell stories of this kind, involving supernatural and magic, may be very ancient, a way of warding off forces that might engulf us, forces that grow in the darkness and shrink in the light.


What's your favourite Solstice reading?

Meeting Your Heroes: Part Deux - Tamsyn Murray

So. Last night, I went to Waterstones Piccadilly to hear Susan Cooper in conversation with the most excellent Marcus Sedgwick. It was an event I mentioned this time last month, when I burbled on about wanting to marry the hero of The Dark Is Rising, Will Stanton. And I might also have blethered on about what a privilege it was to be meeting an author I admired so much. The event itself turned out to be everything I expected and more.

Marcus and Susan in conversation

Marcus began by asking Susan about her favourite childhood authors - she mentioned E Nesbit and Arthur Ransome. They moved on to discuss Susan's academic life at Oxford University and she immediately blew most of the audience away by revealing her lecturers had included one J R R Tolkien and a certain C S Lewis. Tolkien, she said, opened his lectures by quoting Beowulf in the original Anglo-Saxon and then went on the mumble a lot for every lecture after. Lewis, on the other hand, was amazing. As if this wasn't awe-inspiring enough, Susan then mentioned she'd later compared notes on these envy-inducing lecturers with Alan Garner (at which point I began gibbering into my Pinot Grigio), who was studying Classics at Oxford at the same time. She went on to say that she married an American and moved to the United States in 1963, where she's lived ever since.

Marcus wondered what her observations were when she arrived in America as a young British woman. Susan replied that the first thing she noticed on getting off the plane was that the police carried guns. She found the US quite liberating compared to UK, but very right wing. These days Susan still considers herself British, although she holds dual nationality and might possibly be 'rootless'.

When asked about the strong sense of place that permeates all her books, Susan told us that most of it arose from homesickness for Britain, at least in her earlier works. Her latest novel, Ghosthawk, is different; she became fascinated with the land around her home in Massachusetts, land which had become home to English settlers some 400 years earlier but that had supported Native Americans for much longer. She researched the novel's background using primary source documents and some contemporary works. Ghosthawk tells two stories; firstly of Little Hawk, an eleven year old Native American boy, and then of John Wakeley, the son of English settlers. As the novel progresses, these stories become inextricably intertwined. Initially, Susan considered making the white protagonist a girl but realised early on it was unrealistic for the era. And for those who want to know whether Susan is a plotter or a pantser, she had this to say, "I know the beginning and the end and not much in the middle."

Bowing to the inevitable, Marcus moved on to discuss The Dark Is Rising sequence (cue much audience satisfaction and over-excited squeaks from me). Susan explained that she drew directly on places she had known when she lived in Britain when choosing locations for the books - North Wales (where her mother grew up), Buckinghamshire (where Susan grew up) and Cornwall (where her family holidayed). When asked whether it was true that she had written the last half page of the final book, Silver On The Tree, before she had finished the first, Susan told us it hadn’t quite happened that way. The first book in the series was written as a standalone story which she left open-ended because she liked the characters so much. A skiing trip gave Susan the idea for The Dark Is Rising novel but it wasn't until she realised it should be a sequel to Over Sea, Under Stone that it began to really work. She went on to create four more titles and plan the series. "It was like a symphony," she said, "I needed to know where it was going."

Marcus handed over to the audience for questions and Jo Cotterill was by far the quickest on the draw. She asked whether it was true that Susan had round windows in her house with the symbols from The Dark Is Rising books incorporated (it is - there are two windows, each with one symbol). When asked whether the Cold War between the US and the USSR had influenced her writing, Susan replied that it was actually World War II which fostered a belief in them and us, goodies and baddies, the light and the dark. When faced with a question about what she might have done if she hadn't been a writer, she told us she might have been a gardener. "I like gardening, perhaps I'd have done a degree in horticulture."

Jo also asked what Susan was working on now. She replied that she was touring now but she had a small idea which she hoped would grow into a bigger one.

I'm pretty sure that's what every single person in the audience hopes too, Susan. Now, where do I sign up to meet Tolkien?

Susan's remaining tour dates are here.

Me, with Marcus and Susan, hoping their brilliance is catching (also wondering why I didn't wear a nicer jumper)
 

Writing and Place: How Santa Barbara Sunshine Led To a Tale of Wolves and Snowy Woods – by Emma Barnes

I’ve just come back from a visit to Santa Barbara.  It was wonderful to revisit old haunts – the Daily Grind coffee shop, Chaucer Books – and to spend time watching the dolphins and pelicans from Arroyo Burro beach, smell the roses near the Mission, and most of all, bask in California sunshine after a long, cold, Yorkshire winter. 

It also made me think about the relationship between writing and place.

It was while I was in Santa Barbara I got a message saying that my book Wolfie had won a Fantastic Book Award (voted for by children across Lancashire).  This seemed fitting, as it was actually while I was staying in Santa Barbara, five years ago, that I wrote Wolfie.  And that made me think how odd it was that a book about wolves and deep winter woods (so atmospherically brought to life in Emma Chichester Clark’s illustrations) should have been created in such a completely different environment.

cover: Emma Chichester Clark

I remember the process well.  I’d walk my daughter to preschool – passing rows of jacaranda trees, an open air swimming pool and banks of creeping rosemary.  Then I’d go home and open my laptop and plunge into a world where a wolf appears in an ordinary British neighbourhood, and takes the heroine into a snow-filled world of adventure.  Maybe it was the contrast itself that got my imagination going?  I was certainly driven: tapping away intently, working against the clock until pick-up time.  

illustration: Emma Chichester Clark

 Of course many writers are inspired by their particular environment and its familiarity.  But I wonder how often writers are inspired to write about a setting precisely because it isn’t there?  Quite often, I suspect.  In some cases, this might be tinged with homesickness, or nostalgia for a place and time lost.

Certainly, one of the most evocative children’s books that I know, in terms of creating a setting, is Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising – part of the famous fantasy series of the same title.  This book is set in rural Berkshire near Windsor, and Will’s house, the village, the manor and the surrounding landscape are brilliantly portrayed: so real, so immediate, but also echoing with the years of history that lie behind.  When Will sets out into the woods he may meet a Smith from centuries past, or a tramp who has travelled through time, or the mythical Herne the Hunter: somehow the place can contain them all.  This capturing of landscape is also a feature of Cooper’s other books – the mountains of Wales in The Grey King, and a Cornish village in Greenwitch.

These books capture perfectly a British place and time (and I say time because I suspect the “present day” Berkshire that Cooper portrays has probably now been lost as totally as her Medieval or Dark Age versions, under the pressures of modern development).  Yet they were written when Cooper was far from her original home, living on the East Coast of the US.  In interviews, she has described how she was cross country skiing (a thoroughly un-British activity) when the idea of The Dark Is Rising came to her.

I’m certainly grateful for my time in California.  Towards the end of my stay I also went to the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference, which was stimulating in a different way.  And I enjoyed happy hours running on the beach.  But mainly those months were a warm, calm, interlude: a bubble in which I managed to write a book.

Maybe one cold, winteryYorkshire morning I will sit down and find myself writing a tale of sunshine, sand and dolphins…

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Emma's new book, Wild Thing,  about the naughtiest little sister ever (and her bottom-biting ways), is out now from Scholastic. It is the first of a series for readers 8+.
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman
"Charming modern version of My Naughty Little Sister" Armadillo Mag

 Wolfie is published by Strident.   Sometimes a Girl’s Best Friend is…a Wolf. 
Winner of 2014 Fantastic Book Award
"A real cracker of a book" Armadillo 
"Funny, clever and satisfying...thoroughly recommended" Books for Keeps
"This delightful story is an ideal mix of love and loyalty, stirred together with a little magic and fantasy" Carousel 

Emma's Website
Emma’s Facebook Fanpage
Emma on Twitter - @EmmaBarnesWrite

Why children’s books are the opposite of tragedies - C.J. Busby

I was thinking the other day about how, in so many children’s books, the hero finds they have hidden powers. I think it’s one of the aspects of children’s books I love the most, and loved especially as a child myself – the sense that, however ordinary you felt you were, there might be this magical ability hidden inside you, or some unexpected aspect of your character, just waiting for the right opportunity, the right trigger, to reveal itself. 

In one of my favourite books as a child, Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones, Cat Chant discovers, after many trials and mix-ups, that he’s an enchanter – from being a child who could do absolutely no magic, he becomes one who can make almost anything happen by just telling it to. In Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising, Will discovers he’s an Old One, and learns to use his new powers to fight the Dark. And Harry Potter, ordinary downtrodden child, finds he is really a wizard, and a very special one at that. 

But in more mundane ways, many children’s books chart the ways their protagonists learn to draw on hidden strengths or find reserves of bravery, intelligence, compassion, understanding, or determination to overcome obstacles and win through in difficult or challenging circumstances. 

In The Lord of the Rings, for example, it is the 'children' of the book, the hobbits, who really save Middle Earth - and they do so by finding in themselves the sort of courage, grit, compassion, confidence and ability to survive that they'd never have dreamed of in sleepy Hobbiton. The change in them is made gloriously manifest in their final return to the Shire and the battle with Sharkey.

In essence, these sorts of stories tell their readers – you can be amazing! It’s a great message for children – indeed, for any reader. It says, nothing about you is fixed, you don’t have to accept that you are only ever going to be this person or that person. Round the corner, an adventure might be waiting that will draw out of you all sorts of things – that will change you into a kind of hero, with new and unexpected powers. No matter that you are not top of the class, or ‘gifted and talented’, no matter that you think of yourself as ‘ordinary’ – there’s always hope.

This kind of transformative possibility in children’s books seems to me to be the very opposite of tragedy. In tragedies, most often, it’s the inherent flaws in the protagonist’s character that lead to the inevitable tragic outcome. Hamlet’s total introspection, his inability to stop dithering; Othello’s insane jealousy; Coriolanus’s pride; or in the classic Greek tragedies, the hero’s hubris, or their rigidity, or the inevitable repercussions of one terrible action. There’s a feeling of watching a slow motion train crash – nothing stops the slide towards mutual destruction because none of the characters are capable of changing who they are. When I was in my twenties, life sometimes felt exactly like this, and when it did, my best friend and I used to wail: ‘Aargh - I’m in an Iris Murdoch novel!’

In much adult literature events unfold in this way – the characters, like Martin Luther, ‘can do no other’, they react to each other and to events in ways that drive the plot forward, and it’s not very often that one of them finds a hidden power that solves the tangle they’ve all got themselves into. For me, then, tragedy is a quintessentially grown-up (‘literary’) form of literature, about people working through the consequences of who they are, who they have become. But children are always becoming, and so children’s literature seems to me in its purest form the very opposite of tragedy – characterised not by comedy, but a kind of positive hopefulness, an expectation of finding some new, positive aspect of yourself which explodes into the plot and turns it on its head.

This seems especially important to me now, when schools – even primary – are riddled with exams and tests and gradings: children, according to Ofsted good practice, should know exactly what National Curriculum Level they are (a 3a, or a 4b) and why they aren’t yet at the next level up. There is only one path allowed: three points of progress in academic work per school year. Ofsted is not interested in whether you might, in the meantime, have fought dragons, or learnt to conjure a whirlwind.

As with all generalisations, I’m sure people will find exceptions and caveats, and I don’t at all mean to be prescriptive. It’s not that I think all children’s books must conform to this model – but for me, the ‘ideal type’, if you like, of a children’s book, is that it has this sort of transformative hope at its centre. And the ideal anti-type is the tragedy.


C.J. Busby writes funny, fast paced fantasy for primary age children.

Her latest book, Deep Amber, is a multiple worlds adventure for 8-12, published March 2014 by Templar.

'This is an adventure... here are runes and swords and incredibly stupid knights in armour – enjoy!' (ABBA Reviews: Read the rest of the review here).

Website: www.cjbusby.co.uk

Twitter: @ceciliabusby

David Thorpe on the Trail of the Mari Lwyd

Imagine it's a dark midwinter night. You're out on a windy street in Wales. Suddenly an apparition appears before you: a white garbed ghostly figure over six feet tall.

From its ragged cowl protrudes a skull - but no human skull - it has a long snout, huge eyes and many teeth set in a long jaw that snaps together repeatedly as it comes towards you.

Now you notice a band of musicians who strike up a tune, a troupe of strangely-garbed figures.

'Our' Mari Lwyd.

Don't be afraid. It's only me and my associates. We're reviving an old midwinter tradition.

The tradition is called the Mari Lwyd (it means Grey Mary in Welsh). It has links with Punch and Judy, the need to bring cheer during the dark midwinter nights, and I've even discovered a connection that Susan Cooper made in her The Dark is Rising series between the Mari Lwyd and Merlin.

I encountered this tradition for the first time in the midwinter of 2015-12 when my wife Helen, a fiddle player, was asked to accompany two artists who live in Carmarthen and who are obsessed with the Mari (as it's known for short).

Phil Larcher peeps out at Helen!

The artists, Phil Larcher and Viv Morgan, are obsessed to the extent that their entire apartment is decorated with pictures and objects they have made of Maris.

Phyllis Kinney's excellent book Welsh Traditional Music describes the tradition as follows:

"The Mari Lwyd was a horses skull draped in yards of white canvas and looking like a ghostly spirit except for the adornment of coloured ribbons [we use red and green from the Welsh flag], black bottle-glass eyes [ours has flashing lights] and black cloth or leather ears. Hidden underneath the canvas, a man with a 5 foot pole operated the Mari's jaw, which was on a spring, enabling it to snap."

Viv Morgan leading the Mari Lwyd
(Phil Larcher) into a pub.

A host of traditional characters used to accompany the spectral mare: the Ostler or Leader, plus a Corporal, Sargeant, Punch, Judy and Merryman. There are many local variations, and records of the tradition are sporadic and rare throughout Wales. Moreover some areas have completely forgotten about the tradition, despite the recent revival in interest, whereas in others some individuals, upon seeing the Mari coming down the street, give a shout of recognition.

They remember it from their childhoods.

Essentially what used to happen was that the party would knock on a door of a house and a ritualised exchange of banter would occur, each with an occasion for a specific piece of music.

1. The arrival phase has verses greeting the householders and challenging them to a contest; 
2. there is then a spontaneous improvised debate in verse (called the pwnco), largely an exchange of good-natured insults; 
3. if the party is then invited indoors (it may not be) havoc could be caused. For instance Punch might use his poker to put out the fire, unless he'd been made to promise not to before entry, or Judy might scatter the ashes over the room. There is even a suggestion that the Mari might be looking for a baby in the house; 
4. the hosts give the guests drink (!) and a wassailling song is sung as the visitors wish good luck to their hosts; 
5. a further song is sung as the party leaves.

Here are the words of the Mari Lwyd Farewell song:

Dymunwn ich' lawenydd
I gynnal blwyddyn newydd
Trapari'r gwr dincian cloch
Well, well y bo chwi beunydd.

In our part of Wales, Carmarthenshire, as the tradition is being revived we do not visit people's houses but pubs instead. This is the second year I've been involved and the group has got larger partly because my wife has been running a Welsh tunes workshop in which we have been rehearsing the music.


Phil Larcher and Viv Morgan with their Mari Lwyd in the White Horse, Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire, in January 2012 with fiddler Helen Adam.

The Mari Lwyd in The Parrot pub, Carmarthen on
December 15. You might spot yours truly playing the guitar.
Viv Morgan is to my right, Helen on the left.

We made two visits last year towards the end of December. In Carmarthen we stayed in one pub, The Parrot, all evening and were given a cake baked specially for the occasion!

In Llandovery our large party (two fiddlers, guitar, five percussionists including a monk, a flautist and an accordionist - my son Nemos - plus assorted singers) were turned away from the first pub. The second permitted us to terrorise the diners - who didn't know what had hit them!

We visited two more pubs and, halfway through the evening, a twmpath, or ceilidh in the community hall which we proceeded to disrupt - much to the dancers' enjoyment.

When we went to the final pub we found someone who obviously knew we were coming who was wearing a massive papier maché head with a top hat, whom I took to be the Merryman and who danced to our music.

But what are the origins of this madness?

Samhain decoration on the Mari's costume.

Given the link with Punch and Judy, one line of ancestry may lead back to the 16th-century Italian commedia dell'arte, a touring troupe of actors with stock characters. Punch derives from the Neapolitan stock character of Pulcinella, a manifestation of the Lord of Misrule and Trickster figure found in many old mythologies. His wife was originally called Joan.

The Mari Lwyd ritual has also been described as "a pre-Christian horse ceremony" associated with many similar customs throughout the world. Some aspects of it, including some of the music, suggest considerable age.

The Mari could be associated with the Welsh mythic figure Rhiannon, who first appears in the Mabinogion, the Welsh cycle of old stories, riding a shining white horse.

Our Mari is decorated with pagan symbols. The Leader, Viv, carries a broom whose staff is richly decorated, topped with a small black bird, and whose brush is made with freshly picked herbs.


Susan Cooper's brilliant The Dark Is Rising epic cycle of five children's fantasy books includes a character called Merryman. He is one of the Old Ones, on the side of Light. The second book, The Dark Is Rising, and the final book, Silver on the Tree, are set around Aberdyfi, south Gwynedd, in the area where her parents and grandparents lived, and it is likely Susan would have known of the Mari Lwyd tradition.

One of the manifestations of Merryman in the book cycle is Merlin.

You might ask where a horse's skull might be obtained. If you look, they come to you. Viv and Phil swear that they found theirs hanging in the branches of a tree one day when they went for a walk following a storm.

The ritual is not associated with any particular day of the year, just any time around midwinter and the turning of the year, and so it can be repeated in different places. We have one further date on January 11 in Llandeilo, where we will be visiting three pubs during the course of the evening. Perhaps we'll see you.

Traditionally, the host are supposed to give us a drink in each one, but I don't think the publicans have yet cottoned on to this.

Nevertheless it's the best excuse for a pub crawl and a lot of fun on a dark midwinter night that I've come across in a long time. And the Tricksters and Lords of Misrule demand their time. There are those who would like to tame them - but they will not be tamed. Maris are wild.

They have a life of their own. They have been spotted gathering together when the night is dark in wooded valleys where caves can be found.

If you should hear the snapping of jaws and the sound of hooves one dark night - don't venture near. The Maris don't care to be watched by the uninitiated.

Photos: Phil Larcher.