The Thrush Sings Thrice Over.

There’s a thrush singing in my garden. When I let out my hens at daybreak, he’s there, welcoming the new morning. The first time I heard him, about a week ago now, I stood for long minutes. I had no idea that the wind from the top of the hill was lifting my hair, making me shiver. I was inside the song of the thrush. Finally, I was carried down the garden, with my steaming dishes of hen’s mash, calling out the lines from Browning…

That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, 

Lest you should think he never could recapture 

The first fine careless rapture!

I’ve seen him—it might just be a female, of course— fly from my far stand of clumpy willows, out across the fields, but usually he sings in a particular beech tree, establishing his territory for the breeding season. His song repeats on and off through the rest of the day, and is always there as the shadows soften down and the hens are heading to their beds. I’m hoping he and his lovely mate will choose my garden for their nest. Mr and Mrs Thrush don’t always start thinking about lurve quite this early on, but they’re responding to the warm rush of weather that has meant I don’t even need morning central heating. We seem to have left behind the worst ravages of winter behind bang on cue. 

The TV weatherman always makes the point that there are two starts to each season. The astrological start, which for spring is the 21st of March, and the meteorological start, which they seem to think is the 1st of March. But as a Druid, I follow the Celtic farming calendar, which has been with us since the Iron Age. The 21st of March,  June, September and December are the mid-seasons, not the beginnings. Spring started on the first of February, when our little band of earth-magic lovers…pagans, druids, witches, and the like…celebrated Imbolc, the coming of spring. For, although you might not feel very springlike at the end of January, under the soil and in the sap of the trees there is a new thrusting, shooting drive to lift the head and sniff the air and get on with things, from tilling the soil, to some DIY, to raising a family. 

Our Bridie Mantle, or girdle
 People pass through it, tying on their
hopes for the coming year

Imbolc is an Irish word, meaning ‘the milk of the ewe’, andeve n now, February the time of the baby lambs. Imbolc is dedicated to the Mother Goddess and the new life that she brings. She is well-known in Ireland by various names - Brighid Bridie Brigantia, becoming, as the years went on and the religion changed, Saint Bridget. She is often symbolised by the gentle bobbing of the snowdrop, which can literally burst through the last snows, and she's said to drape her green mantle across the winter world, turning it verdent. In her honour, Brigid Crosses are made by weaving rushes into a four-pointed star. As a goddess of healing, she has sacred springs across our lands, and in Solas Bhride Spiritual Centre, in Kildare, Ireland, a Perpetual Flame is tended by the Brigidine Sisters in memory of her, guarded as a beacon of hope, justice and peace.

with thanks to
https://www.blarney.com/st-brigid_s-cross/

It is true that this mother goddess takes a little time to spread her mantle over the cold, hard, earth. Legend has it that if the Winter Goddess, the Callieach, intends to reign over a good, long winter, she will make sure the weather on the 1st of February is bright and sunny, so she can gather plenty of firewood, often seen in the form of a raven picking up sticks in its beak. Therefore, people in old times were generally relieved if that was a day of foul weather. Last year around my area of West Wales it was a lovely day on the first, but this year it was cold enough for snow to fall. So our small ritual was based on the idea that these two had to confront each other; the beautiful maiden of spring and the wizened old hag of winter. Of course the Callieach must lose, and slink away, threatening to return next winter, but we’re not under any illusion that from the 2nd of February onwards there would be nothing but daffodils nodding in sunshine! In fact, it may be that the wonderful, record-breaking warmth we have been enjoying in the past few weeks should be worrying us.

Yesterday, it was ‘as warm as spring’, and I went on a Garden Crawl with some veg-growing friends. This is a bit like a pub crawl, but with tea and cakes as substitute for beer. We saw five wonderful gardens, with polytunnels as warm as a Mediterranean beach. For the first time since last summer, we pulled out my rattan furniture and sat on my lawn in the sun, chatting, enjoying Kate’s greenhouse-grown melon and listening to larks rising from the fields, and my thrush, shouting at the top of his voice.

For me, the song of the thrush is simply the best. Yes, the blackbird and the blackcap are lovely, and the robin has a very pretty tune, while the nightingale’s melody is darkly spine-chilling. But the thrush can lift off the top of my scalp. His song always surprises, full of twists and turns, and not always ‘thrice over’; sometimes he repeats a phrase four times, or twice, but what I love is you never know what will come next…only the bird knows that. It is said that the more complex the song, the smarter the bird, but that can only be true of ‘Passeri’ class of perching birds, because we all knows that Corvus—rooks, ravens, jackdaws—are as smart-as-they-come, and there’s not much to a crow’s song except latent threat and a thread of misery.

Super Worm Moon. With thanks to
 https://res.cloudinary.com/jpress/image/fetch/c_fill,f_
auto,h_400,q_auto:eco,w_600/https://inews.co.uk/wp-content/
uploads/2019/02/shutterstock_205323442-e1550676266368.jpg

Meanwhile, as the new lambs, chicks and fledglings begin their lives, the wheel of the year turns. That’s what I love about celebrating as a Druid; the constant turning of that wheel. Just 21 days ago it was Imbolc;  in less than four weeks time it will be Vernal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, an astrological event celebrated right back to the Neolithic. This year, that special moment of solar balance falls on the 20th March; twelve hours of daylight, twelve of darkness. The tides will rise as high as they can, while it feels as if the world stands still. And this year, as an added frisson, it will be the third full moon of the year; the Worm Moon…and this will be a supermoon, large, close to Earth and wonderfully ripe for magic. I wonder what we will celebrate on that night?

If the weather continues warm, my true-loving thrushes will have started a brood by then, and may carry on having broods of babies to the far end of summer. I haven’t a clue where that nest may be; it could be in the deep layers of ivy covering my century-old  beeches that line boundary, or it could be in the long, thin strip of land between the garden fence and the edge of the high bank elevating us from the little country road. I’ll be leaving out bits of cotton and fluff for birds to take advantage of, but I doubt the thrush family will use this; they like natural materials for their house. I would love to find it, with its clutch of sky-blue eggs, but I don’t want to look too close. I think it’s best if I just let them get on with their lives, while I get on with mine.

You can hear the song of the thrush here.