Round the Herne

This poem has been rather slow in the writing (it's taken  me about three years to finish it off, and many might not think it worth the time!) I'm not wholly happy with the final verse, but it seems quite long enough as it is - but maybe I'll rewrite that verse in time. The poem is offered as a sort of pagan alternative to The Night Before Christmas, with a nod to Hans Christian Anderson on the way, and fuses Russian myth with British folk figures. You can regard it as a Frankenstein mess, or as reflective of the near-global pagan practice of syncretism. Or just class it as a daft kid's poem! The sled pack will eventually appear in another poem of their own, as they do not wish to be thought of as a one trick husky team. The metre, whilst similar to some Irish forms, is a random one I made up for the purposes of the poem - call it robinian metre if you fancy using it in a work of your own! Grandfather Frost “Sleep my son, sleep, on this darkest eve, Outs

This is my much-shortened adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's story 'The Snow Queen', which I've recorded to celebrate the winter solstice (I appreciate that such a morally upstanding Christian story is an odd way of marking a pagan celebration, but there's no point expecting me to make sense). I particularly like Andersen's idea of the warping mirror, and I might shamelessly steal the idea and use it in other ways at a later date. There's a lot to be said for the idea of a poisonous presence working its way into the hearts of people and distorting their view of the world (bit like social media, really). Is it a warning against self-absorption or against the dangers of self-hatred? The Snow Queen herself also needs an opportunity to chew the scenery far more than she gets to do in either my version of the story or the original one. She certainly enjoyed her incarnation as Jadis in Lewis' books about Narnia.

A little light froth for the winter season with a Russian story. Last day of lecturing before the Christmas holidays for me (a productive conference on the ethics of substance misuse - which has stimulated a lot of thought for me, hearing what the other speakers had to say). I may write more on that later, thinking of an animist ethos in drug use (which was largely the angle that I spoke on). It was lovely catching up with people that I used to work with a decade back. This story is one version (there are several) of the Snow Maiden Snegurochka, and her adventures with Ded Moroz, Grandfather Frost. This version is the one that Ostrovsky worked into a play and Rimsky-Korsakov later converted into a popular opera. Love sometimes comes at a high cost, as this take indicates. Old Moroz strikes me as a far more interesting figure than the western Santa Claus.

It's been a while since I recorded anything for the Introduction to Paganism series. After a request, this is an addition on the theme of reverencing nature (both our own human nature and the wider picture). It isn't any more coherent than previous podcasts, but will hopefully provide a topic or two for further debate amongst listeners.

It's been a while since I recorded a story (crap month, but now it's December so let's try and move on!). Last weekend I told stories at a fundraising event in Suffolk for the Dogs Trust. The organiser baked up a plethora of excellent cakes and ran raffles and all sorts. The attendance wasn't big, and therein resides a tale in itself about community and why its like trying to get blood from a stone, but the hall hire was covered and some cash is winging its way to the Trust to feed a few hungry hounds. This short story is one that I didn't tell at the event, but it's nice and short - the account of how five brothers - the Pandavas - and their shared wife Draupadi (a rare example of polyandry) go on a pilgrimage up the Himalayas and encounter a seemingly very ordinary old dog. Things are never quite what the seem, and it always pays to be nice to wandering hounds (you never know who might be looking at you out of those big brown eyes).