Hags and Dogs and Bracken
As we now go further into the mists of late autumn, I’m looking back just before snuggling down into the full hygge of winter. This issue I’m remembering late afternoon dog walking in Vancouver, and I also include a short imaginary account written a few years ago about The Hag Festival.
A Badge of Honour
In this issue, I am presenting a precious brooch in honour of all the dear dog-loving friends who helped us understand the ways of dogs, and how they are agents of love in the world. Especially the folks of the Crab Park rain or shine dog afternoons, who were so supportive and affirming as the dogs walked and played. I’m nostalgic for our temporary pack, now gone our own ways, dogs matured out of puppy play, our lives relocated, redirected. Enzo, Rocket, Riley, Apollo, Benjamin, and all of B’s other play-friends: I see their faces as the names hide from view, I remember the halloween costumes. (And what was the name of Dave’s cat?) I salute you, and all, with this rare and lovely French Enamel and Diamond Set Dog’s Head Brooch, immortalizing a dog from times past.
Imaginary Folklife: The Hag Festival
This is what I heard about the Hag Festival of long ago.
Each year, they had to get rid of the Hag. The men took the heaviest sticks and staves they could carry, and walked in a wide line hitting the brush with their long staves. They moved their staves from side to side over the brush, chanting over and over as they did so: “Hag we know you're in there, Hag you must come out. Hag leave this place.” This was in the old language. And the dogs also yipped and yowled with their masters’ thoughts as the line of men stepped forward two or three moves, and the whole incantation and swiping began again.
This was the Festival of the Hag, which began each February, before spring, a reenactment of an old ritual that brought out all the men, boys, and dogs in the town. Many carried sticks that had been used by their fathers and grandfathers before them, and the songs for calling out the Hag were exceedingly old, from the before-times, long ago. Every 33 years or so, depending on the moon and the weather, the Hag was determined to be so reluctant to appear that she needed to be burned out from the brush. If it was full moon the fires were lit all in a line, and they burnt the nearby brush down all the way to the hill overlooking the great Sea. It was a great fiery field.
“The Hag is burnt, the Hag is burnt,” they sang in the old now-forgotten tongue, to an ancient evocative tune. And so it went year after year down along the generations in that place.
The women prepared feasts from foods stored through the winter, along with fresh-hunted game birds and what ever else had been snared. The long table displayed bowls and plates of foods they had hidden from their families, just for this day. Cheeks aglow, hair piled high and woven with ribbon and strips of rabbit fur, they sat chatting in their bright festive garb, waiting for the men to appear in the great hall. First came the dogs who were jumping and yelping so that the small boys who set out their food could be pushed over, spilling the bowls of mush and bones. Then in rushed all the men together, hale and healthy, even the old, for they had done the deed and sent away the Hag.
The merry music and dancing went on far into the night, with drink and food and loud carousing. Family folk went home at the light of dawn, but sweethearts had already slipped away to warm and covered hiding spots. All the lovers of all persuasions had earlier prepared little nooks lined with furs, or small shelters at the edge of the woods with boughs spread on the ground for a bed. Widows and confirmed bachelors found brief comfort in each others’ arms that night. Through the night, children slept in a puppy-dog pile near the warm flicker of the fire, carried home by their parents before the sun rose on the town.
No one had ever actually seen the Hag, but someone always said they heard her shrieking and howling. Then another always said that was only the dogs.
Were they afraid of the Hag? Yes. All winter long they kept their shutters tight closed through the nights. People said that she would seek refuge in their homes before the festival. Along with the shutters, bunches of hag-herb mixed with mint were tied with ribbon of black, yellow or blue, according to the family rank and involvement in the hag-hunting. Everyone was safe inside when these were fixed to the outside door and inside on the window ledges.
Some nights after the festival, the March winds keened and curled around the houses in the town. If the Hag was angry, she howled in the wind, blowing the hag-herb bunches far into the sea. But by then she could no longer enter the homes, for spring was on its way. Life was beginning anew and there was no place for the Hag to rest.
No one told me why they needed to clear the bracken each year. Perhaps it was just a way to make a cleaner grazing ground or, and this is more likely, just to be sure the Hag would be gone all summer. The people of the town could freely enjoy the land that went to the edge of the hill overlooking the sea, safe in the knowledge that the Hag would only return after the harvest moon, in late Fall. Have you heard her banging on the closed doors through the windy nights?
And now, because I’m looking looking back, here’s an earlier post from a past October -
But wait… there’s more! Continuing with the spooky theme, here’s a movie you may have missed: A Ghost Story, from David Lowery, who recently released The Green Knight.
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Thank you Carol.
All your writing on this spooky subject is so evocative. I'm taken with your explanation in Feeling Witchy that you can't see the Hags with your eyes, only from the inside.