Plough Monday is the first Monday after Epiphany, traditionally the day that agricultural labourers returned to the land after the festivities of the Twelve Days of Christmas. They knew that unless you sought a blessing on the beginning of your working year, that you not doing yourself any favour. In Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, the Straw Bear goes around the streets with the ploughwitch teams. Before the Reformation, the plough teams collected money to maintain the 'plough lights' or votive candles in the local church where the work was blessed by their patron saint.
We all need a helpful spirit to bless our work, which is why I am not getting on so well today, perhaps? I have set lights in front of my Black Virgin and on my Epona shrine for a better beginning tomorrow.
This is a poem I wrote for Plough Tuesday, the day after Plough Monday, a few years ago. It was colder then than it is now, but some parts of the world are still pretty cold and in other parts, many of us are having difficulty getting back to work in a concerted way. It ends with a little charm for the year that is born but not out of swaddling bands yet. The image is from my trip to Northern Iceland in 2012 and shows the Svarfadalur range with some empty play frames in front of it: we are also from our play and back to work, but westill need the blessing to start us back up.
INCANTATION
FOR PLOUGH TUESDAY
by Caitlín Matthews
It is the
bird-quiet hour,
The midday
contemplation of the sun.
On this bleak
day, when no sun shines,
What wraps
the birds in silence,
What power
blankets their song?
They neither
sing nor eat,
The shrouded
blackbirds.
Crows cluster
on chimney-tops
In sad
communion.
Wrens roost,
gulls wheel,
Even the
starling tribe
Have ceased
their stuttering.
For what
purpose are they still?
Clutched by a
grief or memory
Too potent to
be borne?
Is it a
mourning for the absent sun,
Too long
circling from its zenith?
The unkind
kiss of ice
Weakens their
wings.
The
pin-wheeling prick of snow
Steals their
song.
They shelter
in death's shadow
This new-born
year
As the plough
turns a fresh and icy furrow.
So it is for
them I sing
This
tight-folded Tuesday,
When the
earth's iron-hard
To my heart's
coultar,
When the
white and unremitting page
Echoes the
ice-sheets
Clamping the
green world grey.
Out of need,
From heart's
glead,
Kindle the
gladness,
Banish this
sadness.
Turn back the
glebe-land,
Plough of my
screed-hand.
Make glad
their feathers,
In bright,
warmer weathers;
From
midwinter's burrow
Send light
down the furrow;
Come forth,
hidden sun,
For the
year's work's begun!
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| Whittlesey Straw Bear on Plough Monday |
May your year begin with a blessing and continue with a song!
