Mab of Dream

*posted to Witchgrove today*

Hi all,

I know you're probably sick of hearing about bodhrans today, particularly when it involves you having to read long chapters shortly afterwards, but I want to tell you something else.

On Samhain, 2004, as I reckon it (ie it was before sunset on November 1st), I started writing up this dissertation. To say I started it then is to bely months and months of reading and brainstorming, which really began around September 2003. Nevertheless, on Samhain 2004, I started writing. On that date, I put on the soundtrack to 'Rob Roy', which has a tune called 'Rannoch Moor Suite: Scorched Earth/Rannoch Moor Retreat/The Mists/Rob'. In amongst the soaring pipes, there is a bit where the bodhran goes beserk. In listening to it, you have to stop everything. Eyes closed and you are upon the moor, or in a forest, or up in the skies flying, running, dancing, anywhere or any place that your Celtic mind can take you. You have no choice, it's in the tune.

Back in November, in my mind's eye, I was back on a stage at a Vegas Ren Faire, dancing while a significant number of Grovers looked on. Just as I did then, I stopped wondering how I managed to be up there, I just closed my eyes and felt the music take me. Something of the substance of the Gwynedd mountains and the wild Irish sea, the old Dolgellau road, and the slate caverns, and the utterly stunning magical assault to the senses that is Uwchmynydd, something of that filled me and took me. I danced and when I opened my eyes again, it wasn't with the shy anxiety of a Mab dancing in front of hundreds of people on a stage, it was with the momentary disorientation of a Mab returning from a purely Celtic flight of spirit. You can imagine that I had a few rude awakening, when my headphones got yanked off my head during November, dancing again in layers - from the bodhran to the Ren Faire to flying somewhere else. Of late, I've just sat still. These past two days, I've closed my eyes and been in last week's Beltane forest, walking the labyrinth, seeing wonders or off on Haworth Moor, drawing down the full moon and being filled with the beautiful Mother of All.

If I was ever asked what kept me sane during the writing of this dissertation, then I'd probably respond 'nothing, I went mad, just ask the mods...' But a few raised eyebrows later, having got 'was I sane to start with?' out of the way, I'd produce a list. It was my friends and family, it was Witchgrove, it was those day-trips out to Glastonbury or Lincoln, it was the certain knowledge that one day it would be over. But if I was to be asked what was an absolute, like little beats of sanity injected into my spirit every hour or so, then it was the 'Rannoch Moor Suite'. In particular, it was the bodhrans going beserk and those little mental flights of fancy which told me, 'Yes, you might be pretending to be an academic here, but witchcraft won't be found in all your research there, it's here, on the moors and in the forests and the wild Celtic dancing.' The bodhran did it. I kept the 'Rob Roy' soundtrack on repeat for the entire writing of this dissertation and the bodhran took me once an hour.

I couldn't have planned it. I guess only fortune, coincidence or the goddess herself could have done so, but just now, after I'd written my last word and was just completing the last of the cosmetic amendments, 'Rannoch Moor' came on. I didn't close my eyes, I didn't fly. I just let the music fill me as I tidied up the page. As the last echo of the bodhran sounded and the pipes brought me back down, I typed in the last full-stop and saved the work.

Unless Cerr, Draig or Laurie have anything to add to what Anna already said about the chapter they are all reading, then my dissertation is finally over.

yours
Mab
xxxxx