Y Gwanwyn - Spring

As the land awakens to life we acknowledge the first flowers, budding trees and new births of animals and birds. We mark the changes within our localities and honour deities associated with spring.

Brigantica (1st Feb)

Bride of our hearth
Bless this place
With warmth
With shelter
With fire that burns for us.
Bride of our streams
Of wells and water courses
Asperge our land
With rain
With dew.
Bride of the candles
Lit for your remembrance
Bright be your blessings
As the Sun climbs higher
In his Winter rising.
Bride of our company
Of links and friendship
Across Brigantia, the isles
Of your peoples:
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Veil us within the bounds of belonging.

Brigid, Bríg, Bride, Brigantia;
Birch, beith, bedw, betula -
Bright boles break the dark of winter
Buds swell on branches of pubescens and pendula.

Deep wells springing with rising waters,
Sunlight growing as snowlight falters,
Swift streams tumbling over mountain boulders
Swelling through valleys to meet wide rivers.

So fills the cup that she will bear
To the feast of the brightening of the year
As across these islands by each name we call her:
Brigid, Bríg, Bride, Brigantia.

The end of January, or the first of February, is deeply entrenched in modern paganisms as Imbolc; the festival that celebrates the first signs of Spring and the growing presence of the sun in the sky. We may still be in the coldest months and face another equally cold month ahead of us; we are still in the deeps of winter. But, the days are noticeably shorter, it is getting brighter and there first signs of spring are emerging out of the ground in snowdrops and the shoots of daffodils.

This festival is inextricably intertwined with Brigit, Bride or Briganti and the many Saints of these names across the British Isles. These figures in themselves are complex and the links between them – if they represent a continuation and Christianisation of existing polytheistic belief is a matter of debate – let alone the relationships between differing Brigits and the spread of their veneration as either Goddesses or Saints from Ireland to Britain or around Britain. This is as complex as any biological investigation into the dispersal and evolution of species or groups of species, only with much more difficult evidence to extract from history and literature.

So, we shall leave that aside and focus on Briganti; the Brythonic name for the Goddess who for now we shall say lays at the heart of this Brigantine throng.
Traditions in Ireland seem to focus on two main areas; wells and springs, and hearth and home. Often with the former providing water (following libations and offerings) with which to cleanse and bless the latter. Both of these fit well with my own experience of Briganti. To follow the thread further back in time, to begin to look for Briganti amongst the Indo-European cultures we find her best as a Goddess of Dawn; associated with cattle and to some extent with fire, and so by extension we find her associated with the hearth. We lost the more specific Goddess of the hearth in the far West of Europe – though she remains as Hestia in Greece – and appear to have found Briganti as fulfilling that role. And so we come to the more modern day where some of those most ancient elements survive and others have become incorporated.
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Brigantica is when life is beginning to stir. This is for us the ideal time to do the same; spring clean, throw open the windows and welcome the dawn with water and with flames at dawn. Bring the holy waters into our homes and asperge to bring blessings. Clean the fire, or lay out some sort of fireplace. Dairy foods such as milk, cream and cheese can be left out for the Gods and particularly Briganti to remember her as the firekeeper and first amongst the gods to whom we should lay out our hymns.
This is a beginning, a fresh start and we should use it to get ourselves ready and prepare for the lengthening days.

Briganti, mother of the flame, may I pray with a good fire 
Briganti, mother of the flame, may I sacrifice well 
​Briganti; your flame in this house
Fill my home with your warmth
Briganti: your flame at my hearth
May it be bright for all who dwell here
Briganti: your flame in my hands
May I work well, may I sacrifice well, and may I honour the gods well.

FURTHER READING
​Briganti on the Brython website
​For a very different take on Imbolc; The Hidden Imbolc

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Spring Equinox - a fragile balance

​There is surprisingly little written about how the Spring Equinox was celebrated in Brythonic tradition. However, we can presume earlier inhabitants of Britain were aware of the equal length of day and night, blackthorn blossom, celandine sparkling beside streams and frogspawn pooling in ponds.

They would also have noticed birds nesting and the return of spring migrants. The cuckoo, ‘the Harbinger of Spring’, traditionally returns to the West Riding of Yorkshire on the 21st of March. Its arrival in March is also recorded in this jingle from Devon:

‘In March the guku beginth to sarch;
In Aperal, he beginth to tell;
In May, he beginth to lay;
In June, he alterth ‘is tune;
In July away a dith vly.’

I’ve never had the privilege of hearing a cuckoo. In Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo, Michael McCarthy records its decline amongst other ‘spring-bringers’ including swifts, yellow wagtails, pied flycatchers, spotted flycatchers, nightingales, turtle doves and wood warblers.

McCarthy notes that because of global warming, spring is arriving earlier in Britain*, meaning migrating birds miss the caterpillar flush and other food peaks. Conversely, in Africa, the lack of rainfall in Sahel means there is not enough food to recover their energy stores.

For the first time since the last Ice Age the flight-paths of spring (and autumn) migrants have been thrown out of kilter. The fragile balance of the equinoxes has been disrupted. To which Brythonic myths can we turn to help us understand this crisis on the Spring Equinox?

One of our myths associated with spring is Gwydion’s creation of Blodeuwedd from flowers as a bride for Lleu. This magical act, bypassing the normal processes of human procreation to create a ready-made woman, possesses a Frankenstein-esque quality.

Gwydion’s plans go horribly wrong because Blodeuwedd commits adultery with another man called Gronw and the two plot Lleu’s murder. The dying Lleu is found in the form of an eagle by Gwydion. Gwydion consequently punishes Blodeuwedd by turning her into an owl.

This myth suggests attempting to bind nature into anthropomorphic forms for human purposes is doomed to result in rebellion and disaster. One thinks of parallels between Gwydion’s magic and genetic modification and its detrimental effects on eco-systems (I don’t know of any GM plants who have literally rebelled… yet…).

Another myth is Gwyn and Gwythyr’s battle for Creiddylad, daughter of the god-king Lludd. Gwyn and Gwythyr are winter and summer gods who fight to enter a sacred marriage with Creiddylad, a goddess of seasonal sovereignty who might be seen as a flower maiden in spring.

In Culhwch and Olwen, Arthur binds Gwyn and Gwythyr to fight every May Day, places upon them the unfair condition that neither can take her until Judgement Day, then locks Creiddylad in her father’s house!

In Arthur’s hubris, thinking he can control the seasons and a goddess who is sovereign over them, we find a fitting portrait of the behaviour of mankind that has plunged us into the anthropocene.

Can the imbalance of the seasons be redressed? With Gwydions and Arthurs governing much of the world things are looking grim, yet on a grassroots level we can make small changes: planting wildflowers, digging new ponds for spawning frogs, raising awareness about climate change, campaigning and/or protesting against environmental injustice.
We can converse with and pray to our seasonal deities, gift them with offerings and our thoughts and time rather than gifting to the systems that claim to control them. Flower by flower, word by word, nurture their presence back into the world, being their root-deep change.

*26 days earlier than in 1947

SOURCES
Edward A. Armstrong, The Folklore of Birds, (Dover Publications, 1958)
Michael McCarthy, Say Farewell to the Cuckoo, (John Murray, 2009)
Sioned Davies (transl.), The Mabinogion, (Oxford University Press, 2007)