England is small, green and – apart from a bit in the East – rolling. So hills are plentiful. English Pagans are great clamberers up these hills. However it’s less than half of all sunrises that we will see from these green and luscious vantage points, because the sky is clear so rarely. We stand attentively and enraptured; though a little disappointed on those many visits when the overcast British ‘sunrise’ is actually just a gradual lightening of the sky from a dark grey to light grey over a slow meditative hour.
![Hass Hill [Photo Credit: Charlie Kennedy / CC via Wikimedia]](https://wildhunt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Rolling_hills_of_the_Southern_Uplands_-_geograph.org_.uk_-_221791-500x333.jpg)
Hass Hill [Photo Credit: Charlie Kennedy / CC via Wikimedia]
When I lived next to Hampstead Heath, I once went to the Whitestone Pond to watch a winter sunrise. When I had a boyfriend in Chalk Farm, I watched the spring equinox sunrise on Primrose Hill. When I lived in Richmond, I went to a dip behind a spot called King Henry’s Mound in the Richmond Park. That’s just a bit of my history around London neighbourhoods.
It’s even stronger across the country, in the more rural areas. Down near Glastonbury my pals lived in a tiny village by Ham Hill. When I went to visit, they regaled me with the origins of the name, the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon settlements found upon it, and described to me the strange lights that were sometimes seen upon it. Of course we had to trek up it.
My witch friends in Gloucestershire always went with their coven members up the hill behind their house. Almost every Pagan in England has an adopted hill. I promise that if you visit on or around one of the sabbats, particularly a solstice, you’ll hear all about a sacred site, and they’ll take you there if they’ve half a chance.
The English learned to write in the Dark Ages and immediately began writing about lore associated with every bump and dip in the landscape. Medieval writers Gerald of Wales and Geoffrey of Monmouth are two of those who recorded the lore of the land. The tradition kept up through the Tudors and Stuarts. Then the 18th-century antiquarians made an encyclopedic project of English landscape lore. Pagans today use the resources at hand to get hold of the earliest information they can about their local hill. Once that’s under their belt, they find which deities are local, and of course – which ghosts may haunt it.
Then there’s the logistical side to master. In other words, can you get up the hill? And can you see the Southeast from it? For Pagans, ‘accessible’ means you can find a way to get into the grounds and up to the top in darkness, and descend in daylight. Accessible may or may not mean technically legal.
![Summer Solstice on Breton Hill [© Copyright Philip Halling / CC lic. geograph.org.uk]](https://wildhunt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/1932643_72c96218-500x333.jpg)
Summer Solstice on Breton Hill [ © Copyright Philip Halling / CC lic. geograph.org.uk]
Sometimes a Pagan meets another Pagan atop a hill, purely by chance. It’s a funny moment, that meeting. It’s always cold, dew-damp and dark, and we approach gently, so as not to startle. We then always nod at one another. Then we might offer a little advice as to where the sun’s due to come up, or ask if they came up by the wire fence down the left, just to break the ice a little. Then we separate, to find our own spots, and settle into our respective solitude.
After it’s over, an hour or so later, a few more pleasantries are offered with a query of a local pub in the region that might serve breakfast. When parting, one waves and mumbles unsurely ‘Blessed be.’ In that very English way, one doesn’t want to presume it’s appropriate. On the other hand, it would be rude not to extend the traditional good wish.
We’ve just had the winter solstice here, and I’ve recently moved to South London. For the very first time, I didn’t climb a hill as there isn’t one nearby. It feels all wrong. Tonight I’ll be getting out a local map and finding the nearest one, and tomorrow I’ll be digging out the local folklore. Solstice 2015 will see me climbing a hill again and I’ll feel properly pagan once more.
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It is always a joy to suddenly have something you have known about shown to you in a different way and in a way that brings new clarity. The hill thing we have here; you’re right, we do seem to go in for hills a lot or other high places. It reminds me that there are accounts of customs from South Wales of lighting fires on hills as a traditional means of marking the changing year (I think its a harvest custom from memory).
Maybe it is something firmly embedded in our national concious; hills are good; climb them, build forts on them, light fires on them, go there to see in the new year, so see the sun rise or just to enjoy a day out.
Which pat of South London are you in? There are a few good spots; Crystal Palace Park is gorgeous (it even has dinosaurs!) and the uppermost part iirc has good views to the south and south east. The covered reservoir in Nunhead (2 mins down the road from me) is amazing and has commanding views as its on a hill though the fencing has been seriously upgraded as some enterprising people regularly cut through after repairs to ensure access for summer BBQs, sledging in winter and general recreation.
I totally understand that! Where I live we don’t have the sun for two whole months (living in Arctic and stuff…) so when the sun rises for the first time and we get to experience direct sunlight (given the weather’s fair enough) everyone celebrates. In Northern Norway there’s actually a tradition of making and distributing baked goods at the beginning and the end of the Polar Night in schools and other public places. Where I live the sun will appear next Wednesday. I cross fingers for a spotless sky…
One thing we do in the SF Bay Area is to dance the sun up on Beltane, aka May Morning. Various teams, aka side, of Morris Dancers assemble at a few chosen spots well before dawn. The first dance out, while still thoroughly dark, is Abbotts Bromley Horn Dance. One single pipe in front followed my dancers carrying shed deer antlers on poles. Can’t remember if there are deer masks. The only sound is that pipe and the moving feet of the dancers. Quite eerie.
When the sun is fully risen, and “Sumer is a-comin in” has been sung in Old English, Selinger’s Round, aka The Beginning of the World, is danced by the assembled crowd.
I used to attend Seabright Morris (Santa Cruz), but since I’ve moved, it’s a longer trek to Baylands wetlands preserve in East Palo Alto, on the bay. I know there are also assemblies in Berkeley and in San Francisco.
If NROOGD is holding a public Beltane, we usually have the Queen of the May and the Jack in the Green, the ‘Obby ‘Oss, a Teaser, and a Sootwife, and a May Pole where the Queen and the Jack hold the pole while the dancers wind ribbons around them in a dance to the Padstow May Song. Our ‘Oss is patterned after the Padstow ‘Oss, and the English town team has been kind enough to send us one of their retired Teaser’s Paddle. I believe Rowan Fairgrove and Russell Williams, who’ve made several trips to study the Padstow and Maidstone (Maid-something, at least, and I don’t think it’s Maidenhead) customs, are responsible for the ‘Oss design that we use. Russell used to carry the ‘Oss frame for many years, but now other men carry it–it’s rather heavy and requires the right size shoulders.
One year when Canadian folksinger/songwriter Garnet Rogers was in concert down hereabouts, he talked about the red-winged blackbird as being a harbinger of spring, and asked what was the harbinger here. I and a couple of others shouted out “Morris Dance”. He muttered something under his breath, which made the audience laugh.
Ages ago, in the early 80’s when his brother Stan was still alive, the intro to the song The Idiot, the patter was about Morris Dancers and their strange customs, the waving of hankies and the use of stout sticks. There were references to knuckle-dragging beat, or something along those lines (my recordings are packed), which was the time signature/tempo they used. Eventually, some person or side wrote a dance to the tune.
Haven’t seen him in over a decade. Wish he’d come down this way again soon.
That’s some nice traditions !
I’d love to be at a Polar Night celebration.
Forgot to add that traditional fare for Beltane includes “seedy-cakes”–usually a poppyseed sweet–for fertility (of whichever kind of fertility you happen to need!).
Do your treats include saffron as one of the ingredients?
The buns generally use either jam or vanilla cream (yellow=sun) but the traditions vary from place to place. When we say good bye to the sun, there are chocolate buns on offer.
Yum! Apricot jam, lemon marmalade, or lemon curd, perhaps?
In the US, the standard “pastry cream” is a vanilla flavour. I’m willing to bet that if I used some Madagascar or Tahitian vanila, double-fold, it would be stupendously flavourful.
Love the idea of chocolate buns going into the dark.
What a lovely essay. Here in Northern Virginia, we have low rolling hills that become steeper as one moves West. The weather here tends to be overcast and sunrises are rare, although sometimes a cloudy morning can turn into a purple/pink/salmon/purple sunrise. It’s all real, as someone said, and it’s all metaphor.
“It’s all real; it’s all metaphor; there is always more.”–Aidan Kelly.
Deborah Bender,
To which I always add in my morning meditation: They’re all liminal spaces.
Great post! I did walk up (long easier as opposed to shorter & steeper) Glastonbury Tor when I visited way too long ago. I looked down around the countryside, trying to see where a Lake would have been. I can recognize that scene from the Tor, or above, every time.