Ceallaigh's Blog
This is a bodhrán duet I played with Tristan at the Chelsea Sounds & Sights festival in June, 2010, which was recorded and cut by banjo player Dave Foster. I thought we sounded pretty good!
"The Interstitial Fairy Demolition Crew Casts a Circle" is now available at Eternal Haunted Summer.
The new C.S. MacCath web site went live today at 7:15 p.m. EST.
When I first learned this song as a child, I thought it was about flowers.
My very first favorite folk song. I've known the words as long as I can remember. They're here, along with the tin whistle tune.
An easy tune, and the first one I've felt I could play reasonably well. The lyrics can be found below the sheet music. Enjoy!
My entire bibliography is now online in MLA format. You can view it by clicking here or by clicking on the 'Bibliography' link above.
Caveat: This essay was written in 2004, a year and a half after I graduated from the M.A. program in English at the University of Maine. As I recall, it took me a year and a half to contextualize my experience in such a way that I didn't simply rant in broken half-sentences when I tried to write about it.
The essay was up on my web site until late 2006, when I took it down because I believed my perspective on the subject matter was too emotional and too personal. Since then, I've logged about three requests a month for the page, which is significant. So, I'm offering it here again, against my better judgment, in the hope it's of help to you. I still mean just about every word of it.
Roughly a year into my master's program at the University of Maine, a professor I knew very little invited me to write a conservative critique of J.R.R. Tolkien's work. I nearly laughed in her face, but I managed to gather my composure enough to inform her that I wouldn't have any idea how to begin such a task and would, furthermore, find it distasteful in the extreme. It was then that I realized part of the reason why I had been marginalized by the department. They all thought themselves liberal and believed I was not.
I've always tried hard to walk the line between speaking my truth and remaining professional in my public journal space. I value truth-tellers and bold speakers who do not cower behind political correctness and herd mentality, even when I disagree with what they have to say. However, I am uncomfortable with finger-pointing and ad hominem attacks as well, so I try hard to refrain from those things. All this by way of saying that I hope you'll forgive the abstractions in the following entry; I'd like to discuss a couple of hard lessons I've learned this week, but I'd rather not mention names.
This essay does not represent the entirety of my spiritual perspective, nor am I entirely comfortable with the 'Heathen' label. To be sure, I am not always comfortable with any label. However, I do believe the piece speaks to the problem of racism in the Pagan community, and so while I am not always comfortable with labels, I am always comfortable with multiculturalism, and so the essay remains.
I am a Heathen, which means that I am a practitioner of reconstructed Northern European (NE) spirituality. Heathenry is a Pagan religion, which is to say that it draws wisdom from the animistic, nature-based spirituality of pre-Christian, Northern Europe. I'm providing this resource on my web site for two reasons; first, I hope to answer a couple of basic questions about my faith for interested readers, and second, I hope to address the problem of Heathenry vs. white supremacy.
If you have a question about Heathenry you'd like me to answer here, please contact me, and I will add it to the FAQ.
Glad Frith,
Ceallaigh