u/BardOfTheBanrigh

okay so sorry to break shitposting character but i need your help WCCJ.

tl;dr can anyone share any Discord spaces (i just prefer it over Reddit, Reddit's UI blows harder than Heimdall on his horn) with a suitably irreverant and humorous approach to Craft and/or praxis like we got here?

rant: like what the fuck is wrong with so-called pagan discord servers man? in my experience there are two kinds:

the first kind is full of spoiled kids (frequently Christopagans or 'godspouses') who are so thin-skinned even the most mild joke gets you chased like you're the sacrificial king for the earth goddess at Samhain. pagan equivalent of babywitches, i suppose.

the second kind is full of strict reconstructionists who believe - get this, this is a good one - that paganism is somehow about having rules (what happened to them? why are they like this?). can you even imagine such a thing? for a start, who the fuck is enforcing them? what are we, monotheists who believe in ideas like 'sin'? get the fuck out of this stone circle bro.

so yeah it's a disappointing experience when you're possessed of a mindset more along the lines that the gods enjoy a good joke too (Hermes especially, original trollface right here) and that the line between fiction and faith is not really a line so much as a co-mingling area.

can anyone reccomend anything to salve my woes, or have i actually been wicked king Bres all along?!?!!

Edit: there's been enough comments that I just went ahead and made one. Let the StoneCircleJerk commence!

nah but that girl makes some poor choices. what the fuck was she doing chasing after Cu Culainn?

did she just wake up one day on Tara and think to herself "you know who'd make a great romantic choice? a fucking violent sex attacker, thats who"

as if. i bet some bloody Ulstermen just put the whole thing in afterwards to big up their lad (Ulstermen are always doing things like this, you can't take your eyes off them for a second)

i mean, ma righ Lugh was right there the whole time, what was she even thinking?

Lugh knows the score, Lugh loved his mammy, and he didn't need Macha to curse the entire enemy army away just so he could act the big yin! he got those flowing golden locks too, they bring all the bhandia to the grove.

she just does these things sometimes to confuse us. i'm sure it's fine, but i'm gonna go carve her a whistle out of an elder branch just in case...

(probably garbage but just an extended gag that grew out of hearing a bean feasa refer to Cu Chulainn as a fuckboy. come get me, Witchternet.)

so there i am down the hut with the other bards, just having a wee quiet drink, you know? just me and the lads silently contemplating the loveliness of the earth goddess, as you do.

then all of a sudden there's this big hullabaloo at the door, and in comes King Fuckboy himself, Cu Chulainn. my man is already at the bar demanding the strongest dram and giving it the big yin about how he'll set about us if it's not uncorked in a hurry. typical bloody Ulaid, they're all like that.

"Red Branch? shit branch office of Tara if you ask me" i mutter to myself... but the big prick hears me. aw naw, here we go.

"whats that mate?" he shouts to me.

"i was just wondering" i says back "can yer mammy sew?"

"what you on about?" he shoots back. i can hear his two brain cells creaking from here.

"well, i was just thinking the earth goddess has gone and stitched you up good and proper" i propose to the musclebound bam before me.

so he starts going on about what a top shagger he is first, how all the men of Ulster are feart of his big swinger, and hide their wimmen from him. i let him keep going for a bit, then throw the first verbal javelin at his stupid mug.

"oh aye, Aoife her name was, wasnt it? was it before or after you held her down at swordpoint she told ye what a big man ye are, eh?"

some of his pals think better of their choice and back off at that little bombshell. he cuts off that wee line of gas i've put at a peep, and goes for the big man fianna act instead.

"what, all of the Connacht army at once? aye, would be impressive if it hadn't all been because of Macha in the first place. she was just letting you have your wee moment son, don't let it get tae yer heid."

he's really on the ropes now. he starts babbling something about tying himself to a rock by his own guts or some other improbable pish, as if that proves anything.

"mate, listen" i says to him "the only reason no one would come near was a) because of the stink and b) because they all know only the Badb Catha proclaims the end of the battle. yer a pawn, buddy, plain and simple."

thats the final straw. he starts bubblin' like a wean and he's gone, cannae see the bam for dust.

another total victory for the bardic class.

just as the Great Queen intended.

so druids, right, druids are a weird bunch with all that "oh ackshully it's totally safe to make a grove under poisonous yew trees" (mate, what?) and that weird "marry the king to the land" thing they do (highly suspect)

but they're basically alright, yeah? cos they still get their round in at the pub later. they don't even smell too bad, once they wash all the blood off their robes.

but wizards? oh, i swear by all of the Morrigan's names, they're the worst.

who in the name of Lugh do they think they are, thinking theycan CONFINE the fundamental FORCES OF THE GODS to paper, like some kind of THRICE-DAMNED ROMAN INVADER?!

words were designed to be held in the HEAD, not on MASHED UP PLANT MATTER. we have sacrificed BILLIONS of cattle on trying to develop a script, with NO REAL WORLD APPLICATIONS. are they TRYING to put me and the other bards out of a job or something?

if they were possessed of THE TRUE FILID SPIRIT then they would just be able to REMEMBER things like a FUCKING NORMAL PERSON, but no, they're too busy using all their cognitive faculties remembering when the fourth dinner serving of the evening is. acorn porridge not good enough for them or something, eh?

i've been in their libraries, had a rifle through their grimoires, perused their collections of trinkets and geegaws. didn't impress me, and neither do those fancy finger movements they think are SO impressive to all the girls at Lughnasadh.

i'm onto them. i've got the Eye of Balor on the lot of them, and i will get to the bottom of this conspiracy.

they have played us all for absolute fools.

nah but really so i'm in blessed Eriu doing magic woo woo stuff with mosses and trees and shit, right? and the sun is right fucking there like a big queen and i'm like ooooft Aine you're looking braw the day.

but like, she's taken it like some sort of romantic intent, and fucking followed me?!?!! i dont think she realises the lack of tolerance the pasty white Scottish skin has.

it's like that time on Imbolc moonrise and i lit nineteen candles like a fucking eejit and accidentally summoned Brigid, so we had that shit spring, because as everyone knows, if Imbolc is good the Callieach is out for firewood and the winter ain't done yet.

swear to all the gods pal, this land is out to kill us one way or the other. why would the Tuatha De do this?!?!?! 🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛

(also if anyone can cast like, some kind of lawyer spell to put a court order on the big besom to stay the hell away from me, thatd be so good besties 🪄🥰🍀)

So I don't consider myself a practitioner, more a witness/rememberer, because I'm into that whole Gaelic bard class grindset. Stories and magic at the same thing to me.

But I'm curious as to how people who think they can do actual magic see the gods fitting into their craft. I vibe more with the Pratchett idea of witches that they'd deal with gods, but wouldn't go around believing in them, because witchery is really more headology (except when it's not) in Discworld (yeah yeah it's fiction, but remember, I think faith and fiction are basically the same, but without that being an insult to either).

So - is it a case of "I ask the gods for power/energy/whatever to make this thing happen", or is it more like "I ask the gods to do it for me", or something else?

Please submit your answers on an exactly 3x3" black postcard, and attach to the nearest hooded crow for delivery to Uisneach.

STOP POSTING ABOUT THEM! I'M TIRED OF SEEING THEM! MY FRIENDS ON WITCHTOK SEND ME MEMES CARVED INTO TREES, ON BARDCORD IT'S FUCKING MEMES CARVED INTO TUIRED!

I was in a sacred grove, aye? and ALL OF THE GODS were just the Morrigan!!!!

I-I showed my fianna underwear to my banrigh and t-the triskele I flipped it and I said "hey babe, when the underwear is a trinity HA HA HA BRIGID REFERENCE HA HA FUCKING CATTLE AMIRITE?!!!!?!?!?"

I fucking looked at a trashcan and said "THAT'S THE COIRE ANSIC"

I looked at my penis I think of the Dick Track of the Dagda and I go "PENIS? MORE LIKE GAE BULG BECAUSE NONE CAN WITHSTAND ME ONCE I WHIP IT OOT" AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHGESFG

I wanted to share some more details as to the prose worlds I have been trying to create, that are a way to express all the role reversal  idle daydreams that refuse to be silent for even a moment. Some feedback on the concepts and ideas detailed below would actually be helpful, if anyone cares to do so.

Thank you to those who had a read and an updoot on the Magh Tuired piece, I appreciate it. I promise the next one won't be written in impenetrable slang.

I think, as a writer actual or aspiring, you have two halves. I certainly do, anyway. Part of you wants to write things that are truth, that really say something, that explore some deep part of the self or of society; part of you wants to write things that are just indulgent and fun and ecstatic for the hell of it. I call this the Apollo-Dionysus Paradox, or as Pratchett might have put it, the difference between what you know you need, and what you think you want.

The same could be said, I guess, for your persona as a lover. Part of you knows it's about awe and sovereignty and something that is more than just words, and part of you... well, you know.

So behold another of my Specifically Autistic little pieces, about the Realms which lie between the high rainbow and the low cauldron. These are the balanced ones on the border, that are both truth and ecstacy, the line of forts between light and darkness.

===

The first world is that of the Ballad of Aurelia Branwen, the Golden Raven, whose realm wears Brittonic garb. This is a story like one we see repeated in the real world all too often – a born queen conditioned by a patriarchal society to believe herself a serf, and the breaking of chains she has forged for herself, thinking in error that they were wings.

During the time of the Great Conspiracy among the still unconquered Celtic tribes against the Romano-Britons, Aurelia by neccessity leads the defence of her own land against one of their raids, by drawing her fathers sword from his cairn grave – for while they lived in a patriarchal Roman-influenced society, he was not entirely of that stripe, and taught her to ride and to wield a sword before he passed. The day is won, and she becomes the guardian of her people in the chaos of Rome's withdrawal, expanding her realm not by force but by extending her protection to others, by co-ordinating and preserving what remains of their passing civilisation against the encroaching anarchy and collapse.

A tribal king who seeks to claim her lands sends one of his druids as a spy, under false pretence of a mission of peace – he keeps a pleasant public face, but secretly despises her for her bleeding heart and foreign faith. Over time, his view changes, as he sees in her a reflection of the great queens of his own mythology, and how she is an embodiment of the land and the people greater than the sum of its parts.

Through the course of the bloody war with the would-be conquerers, a love blossoms between them that becomes more powerful than any host mustered against her. I'm still formulating exactly what that plays out like – something suitably grand and full of adventure, no doubt. To say this one is a “Queen Arthur” kind of story, a Once and Future Queen, would be fair; but I think I'm self aware enough to avoid the trap of “just do the male archetype but in a dress” and instead make her something specifically feminine in sovereignty.

===

Across the sea lies the realm of the Knudsienedrapa, in a painfully obvious Viking Age Scandinavia analog. Knudsiene is everything Aurelia is not – she is hard, and knows it, and so is her law. To have it otherwise in the frozen taiga she hails from would be death, for the high northlands know no mercy. She was not always so, but she suffered a great loss in love, and locked the part of herself that could feel warmth behind an iron door, then tossed away the key.

The man of the drapa is a noble hostage, taken from an island far to the south her fleets have conquered (which she of course leads personally; the north will not accept a queen who cannot swing a sword), as surety against rebellion. He comes to be some amusement to her at court; he is full of songs and poetry unlike the brutalist verse of the north's skalds. He recites the verse to ease his own spirits and think of home, and he cleverly adjusts them to place her within their stories, simply as a way to curry favour in the hope of any relief from the hardness of life here. She remains like ice, however, and over time he sickens for want of his own warmer climes.

The hostage near death, her knower-shaman advises she cast him from the walls; he is spent, and cannot exist here. The land has rejected him; better to have it done with, and send him on to his gods.    This she fully intends to do, carrying him to above the raging sea to be thrown in and drowned; but an intervention of prophecy nearly costs her her life, and saves his in the process. She knows better than to argue with the will of the gods, and so reluctantly at first, but then ever less so, lets the door she has kept locked up open again. This has consequences, however; for those who would have her cast from her throne can sense any chink in a foe's armour, into which a dagger in the dark may be thrust.   

===

One Thousand Selenian Nights is our Greek tale, and like that mythos, it is the most sexually charged and indulgent of the trio (those nefarious Olympians and their shenanigans!). In this one I play fast and loose with a story from Greek mythos I feel is an allegory for when society switched from pastoral-matriarchal to sedentary-patriarchal: the one about how Athens was named.

Our male lead is Dionysus, god of theatre, wine and ecstacy. Above Athens, after the divine ballot that see its women stripped of their voting and land rights, he tries to comfort Athena as she weeps for them; that night, he dreams fitfully of how he too, in the future – in his form as Bacchus, his transgressive, boundary-breaking identity – will suffer such an erasure of his identity.

He consults the Oracle at Delphi, but cannot make sense of it's visions; he entreats the other Olympians, but none will concede the point to him what they have done is a great wrong, and all scoff at his visions of the wolf that will rise in the west because of it. So he turns for aid, in desperation, to a being he knows to be full of wrath: the Titan-goddess of the moon, Selene, she who took [???] from him for insulting her.

He entreats her with sacrificial offerings and the wines of Athens' finest vines; bemused that he would call on her, she listens to his woes, but tells him it is nothing to her. It is all distant noise from her chariot, and she feels little for his plight. He tells her that he knows how to make her fully understand, through the way best known to him, an ecstatic piece of theatre that tells of what he wishes could be instead. He performs this for her, and she understands. Her anger is terrible, but so is her resolve to make his visions a reality; so she bequeths on him her aid, and history goes a different way, and there is no wolf in the west after all.

===

Are they all basically the same story? Kind of, but that to me is part of the point. I feel I'm always chasing one unknowable principle, like Chaos Theory, that defines the root intersect of love, art, beauty, truth and divinity; what to Graves was the White Goddess, or to others the idea of an Eternal Muse, that which is so often associated with the moon and her three phases.

Everything else is reflection.

So, anyone else a member of the Autistic Grove and got a hilariously specific take on the Celtic faith because of it – either in how you formulated your praxis, or how it’s something you use to deal with ‘tism issues?

If you do, what does it look like? How does it differ from the usual interpetations of the same gods by others? How many times have you had to have to defend it from people screaming at you that it isnt “right” or “lore accurate”?

I got a few thoughts… oh, I’ve always got Thoughts… first, the concept of UPG.

To me UPG might as well be a description of the idea of Zero Theory of Mind in autism. I know not everyone holds to the ToM idea (show me a room full of autistic people who all agree on a given thing and I’ll show you a bridge in Brooklyn I’ve got for sale), but it’s the most convenient explanation I’ve found for “why can I not think with other peoples drives and logic without having it explicitly explained to me, and even then I still don’t feel it?”.

I dunno about you, but sometimes I feel like I have to just ignore reality to make the world make sense. Not ignore it as in living in a literal fantasy world, but ignore it as in just nod and smile at the things that seem completely indecipherable to me – things I can’t make sense of through rational enquiry alone, things that would need me to feel differently – and try to get on in spite of that. I guess that’s just a kind of masking I’m describing. I feel like UPG can be used as a similar mechanism; you can use it like a mask on the world itself (not to hide it, but to shape it). It’s not negative masking, though; for society tells you the spec of the social mask, but in UPG you cut the mask yourself.

Part the second: information overload, and the corresponding need to try and make a List Of Everything to accommodate that.

You ever feel like the answer to any big question is just so complex, with too many possible connections between nodes (like a big mesh where every node connects to every other) to track? I end up making big lists and diagrams to make them make sense; eventually the list gets so complex and high maintenance I abandon the thing itself. Maybe that’s a little self-preservation trick my neophobia does. I’m into too many things, with too many fanciful goals.

The gods helped me out with this one. Sun, sea, storm, trees, rivers, the sun and moon, the planets, whatever – these are all aspects we personify already. I stopped thinking about the lists as metrics of task categories and such (IT worker grindset), and started thinking of them as belonging to a looser grouping of, like… what I wanted to feel, what they made me think of, what memories they drew up, and where each of those sat on the week (with a little Celt’d up version of the Greek/Roman/German day naming pattern). “Energies”, if I was to be fanciful about it. Eventually the importance of the day distinctions faded, and it became more fluid, about which goddess was in my head at any given moment as the determinant of what goal would be worth taking a stab at. I’ve got a lot more done since I did this.

I think the story of Lugh becoming king of the Tuath De, his form as Samildanach, is another aspect of this that really hit me where I live. He’s like the light side of information overload where everything fascinates you, so you try everything, and become great not through mastery of one skill but competence in many (this is basically my CV). There’s an accidental analogy for the cultural makeup of Scotland in there; imagine his speech before the fort as something like “Ask again, I am a Gael / Ask again, I am a Briton / Ask again, I am an Angle / Ask again, I am a Dane”. Truly we are the confused offspring of too many parents, but that’s neither here nor there.

Third, the role of the bards is autism-coded. No really, bear with me on this one. It’s a little fanciful but I think I’m onto an at least half-baked hypothesis here.

What did bards do, primarily? Remember things, and specifically train themselves in noetic techniques to enhance that capability. What does a person do when they have amassed a certain amount of knowledge from multiple domains? They start to see patterns. What’s another possible word for someone who has an uncanny ability to predict the course of the future by observing it’s past? A prophet.

I’m not saying that bards, and the elite fili, were some sort of autistic caste of seers; that would be ridiculous and a clear forced insert of a modern lens (which is fun for a laugh, but not to be treated too seriously, I feel). What I am saying is that in the same way autistic people (at least, those with a high functioning but just socially/emotionally inept profile like myself) now often gravitate to technical fields with a lot of domain knowledge requirements, it’s nice to think bardhood might have been the ancient equivalent somehow.

I dunno, maybe it was all just big Pro Autism Scheme. We worked out a way to make all those kings give us free grub to sit in their courts and infodump about the gods, under threat of a vicious emotionally unregulated meltdown slander. We’re a sneaky bunch, sometimes.

Anyone else got a story of the gods and The Experience to share?

...since that's what the Morrigan intended.

Four Norman invaders break into my flyting contest. "Here, whits aw this drama fur eh?" As I grab my Claiomh Solais and Gae Bulg. The spear punches a tuath sized hole in the first Norman, he's dead on the spot.

Draw my Claiomh Solais on the second man, miss him entirely because it's a highly unwieldy weapon and seriously did we never think of just using a shield?

I have to resort to the Coire Ansic balanced precariously at the top of the stairs, filled with an infinite amount of Tennants (for none go away from it sober).

"Here pal, can yer mammy sew? Then get her tae stitch this!" the wave of lager washes away two men in the blink of an eye.

I heft Lia Fail like a caber and throw it at the last invader. He Bleeds out waiting on a medicine witch to arrive since wounds caused by having a big stane drapped on yer coupon are impossible to stitch up.

Just as the Morrigan intended.

Seriously it's a nightmare having the gift for the bardic slander sometimes. You think you're just making a funny little crack to yer mate and then BAM the prick dies from the absolute red rotten slagging you just dished out.

Why would the Tuath De do this??!?!?!! 🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛

What you're about to read may be beauty, or it may be heretical. It's a matter of perspective, I guess.

It may sound incredulous, but the Morrigan first properly appeared to me – that is, rather than just as a device of song and prose I was aware of on my periphery – as the Eternal Muse, like Graves and his White Goddess. This may be a role you'd imagine more belonging to a bright summer goddess like Brigid, Aine or Flidais – even if the Morrigan has composed a much fuller corpus of work (“Have you a story, Badb?”) - but I've always been a fan of blood and thunder stories like hers.

See, I'd set out one night on a bit of soul searching, questing for that mythical intersect where love, art and the self all meet on the long road back to Scythia. Asking myself difficult questions about why I felt this way or that way about this or that thing, you know? Trying to be, as she commanded Lugh, awake.

I wrote a little piece. It is honestly rather tawdry, but I was trying to say something deeper with it within a patchwork arrangment of parts that was about a woman's reclamation of her sovereignty from men who'd taken what was not theirs (a classic Pro Man Move if ever there was one), but it was raw and true, yet still wanted for a catalyst, a spark, that would start the slaughterous battle and make the rest fall into place.

The crows called. The Morrigan spoke. I wrote the rest in a stream of consciousness I couldn't quite explain afterward. I doubt I'll ever write anything so succinct again.

Imagine that story forms into a great trunk, because it's always about trees eventually. This tree is our axis mundi. It is both Apollonian virtuous depictions of romance, and Dionysian renditions of ectstatic fantasy, because the keystone piece was a little of both; we need not concern ourselves with the latter works here.

Now imagine this tree is dotted along it's length, up toward the Apollonian heights and a great rainbow that represents my real praxis (story and faith share a fluid border in my mental landscape), with pocket worlds in each which of a panopoly of tales can exist independently. Ah, the characteristic autistic urge to organise all things! Tis a blessing and a curse, say true.

Let us zoom in, as the crow flies, on the when most dear to me – that of another Magh Tuired, and the Morrigan Cycle. Try not to judge me too harshly for the “romantasy” framing; these stories are the furthest thing from being about the women of the piece being mere narrative objects, or for the male gaze, or about the “artists novel” self-insert hero being the special exception, or any other such indulgent fantasy. They are all sovereigns, each one. May the Morrigan strike me down and send me to Donn if I speak a word of a lie.

The Phantom Book is the origin story. Cast from Keystone Earth (to borrow King's term) by the Christianisation of the Gaelic world, the Morrigan becomes Banrigh na Sidhe, the Queen of the Faerie Mounds; over time, she grows bitter and twisted in isolation, and seeks to restore what was hers by composing a tome of all prophecy, the Lexica Morrigna; it develops a life and agenda of its own, and nearly destroys her, but she saves herself from it's planned fate for her, and forges the world of Magh Tuired from the Four Treasures of the Tuath De.   

The Spirit Book is the entry of our male lead, who need simply be known as the Witness. He is drawn to Tuired by the Badb Catha form of the Morrigan, and in his first year there has two romances. The first is with Brigid, who represents the summer sun in Tuired; and the second with Beira, who is the winter sun. Through them he learns the value both of song and of silence, of a scream and the storm.

The White Book starts nineteen turns of the wheel after the Spirit Book ends. Tuired has been invaded by an outside threat that sickens the land, and so too the Morrigan on the hill of Tara (for She is the Land); being reflections of her, none of the other great queens of the realm – Brigid, Beira, Danu, Nemain, Macha and the Badb Catha – can win out against it either. Our Witness from before – older and wiser now – by merit of his composed verse is granted the geas to travel outside Tuired thrice by the Auld Trial of Kings, recover a new trinity of Treasures for the Land, and awake the Morrigan. This he does, and she once again is bloody destruction, making a great overthrowing of the sickness that has come to Tuired; as once she so commanded Lugh Samildanach, in ages past, on a different Magh Tuired.

The key part? He doesn't “get” the Morrigan at the end, because she is not a prize to be won or an entity that can be systemised and classified (very much the core point of every story I dream up, vis-a-vis what women really are from a man's perspective).

He goes through all the trials that he does because it is the duty and privilege of a bard to dream for the good of the Land.

And that is the Truth.

I am a crow, and like all crows, I like to steal shiny objects that seem important somehow. Sometimes these objects are made of meter and rhyme.

I dunno if other people do this, but sometimes I hear a song that's about one thing, but my brain makes it about another thing and starts doing an ad-hoc lyric rewrite to make it fit. It's something to do with struggling to create from scratch, I'm sure.

So I give you this little piece of appropriation (for as Wilde says, to plagarize is the mark of the appreciative man), a re-rendition of "Seeker Divine" by Hagalaz' Runedance (which is essentially a conversation between a seiokana Norse witch/seeress and Odin; it's very good, I recommend looking it up) so it is instead one between a Bard and his Great Queen.

For all things serve the Badb Catha.

===

Through glen and strath a gale revives

Peace of the heart long lost to the mind

High above, three corbies fly

Can this not be a sign for me?

Banrigh are you guarding me?

Many faced, and thrice of names

Queen of the Fairy Mounds, sovereign and wise

All feel her presence, her prophecy

Great phantom queen, are you watching me?

Banrigh na Sidhe, will you answer me?

Come banrigh, come o banrioghan

Goddess of war and prophecy

Terror of Formoire

And the men of the runes

A cairn, a coire, I offer to you

Come, Morrigan, call forth the murder

To claim the battle and fear of their cry

Phantom Queen, raise the spirit in me

Your guidance shall be my victory

Having waxed lyrical before about my thoughts on role reversal expressed through prose, I wanted to share a draft scene (which is still rough and bereft of some detail) from a wider piece I've been chipping away at for some time. Thoughts and feedback are much appreciated; I basically write for myself, so I have no idea if it'd even speak to another.

I am pretty sure it qualifies as falling under role reversal, or at least adjacent enough to be of appeal to the gang here. It's not role reversal in the usual real world sense, of some well known dynamic being flipped; the world itself this story resides in, Magh Tuiread ("Plain of Towers"), is an entire world reversed. I guess it probably qualifies as romantasy (a term I just heard about today).

It's about divinity reversed from the Abrahamic paradigm we're given of it as male, going back to older ideas about women and the land and sovereignty, and a man's journey to understand these things. It's about that role that was taken - nurturer and destroyer, the two halves all women have - being reclaimed in some other when. I hope this is an acceptable theme for here; I think it definetley fits with the core premise of "she sweeps him off his feet", without straying into D/s themes (that's a whole other branch of writing I've got cookin', and isn't appropriate for this sub).

The dialogue will seem incomprehensible. Scottish slang is like that. Beira is one of those rare specifically Scottish mythos figures, and I wanted to capture that (and also do a little Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting" reference, which is written mostly in impenetrable Edinburgh slang).

But enough preamble, and so to the prose. This scene belongs to the second phase of the cycle; our male lead has been in Tuired a year, and been the swain of Brigid, goddess of the hearth, smithcraft and poetry. But the wheel turns, as it does, and there is parting...

===

Imbolc approaches again, and Brigid tells him they must depart from each other: the Taltieanan Games approach, and he must participate in the annual handfasting on his own merits, by performing in one of the Games events of strength, skill or slander.

After their last night together, Brigid accompanies him to the Games, and gifts to him a slim, black leather bound book of untouched pages – the Blank Book of Badb, telling him that when he reads its words, he will know the truth of anything that is said; but before he can ask her to explain, she is gone amid the crowds with a final wave back to him.

Utimatley he gets to the bardic contests and finds the book begins to write itself with the unmasked truth of what is said by others; thus he writes his own piece that is bare and clumsy and minimal, but recieves no acclaim; he is deeply embarassed and flees the field, running into the high meadows and heather, becoming lost and wandering through the dark until dawn arrives.

When it does he happens upon a burn with herds of black Hebridean sheep nearby, and stops to fill his waterskin, finding mundane tasks to avoid processing the feelings after another dramatic meltdown.

As he leans down to draw water, a ram bursts from a thicket behind him; he falls into the burn, down a hidden deep sinkhole, and is too weary to struggle for the surface. As the darkness closes in he feels a hand reach down and grab him, exploding out of the cold water onto the heather bank.

“Ach, ye daft wee beast, ye've nearly droont yersel'” a cold but soft voice says, as he is bundled up in a great thick wool cloak and bore up over her shoulder. “A coorie in by the stove will fix ye.”

So back to Beira's spartan but welcoming bothy amid the heather she hikes with him, and under her his story continues through the cold but still bright and forgiving light of the winter sun. Unlike Brigid, she does not indulge idleness; after a few days, she puts him to work.

She does not need to be adored and placed on a pedestal, for she is used to a hard and solitary life, and will have nothing in her bothy that is not useful. Where from Brigid he learned to speak again, here he learns to listen, but not to words: to the land, to the sky, to the calls of sheep and gulls on lonely mountains.

He sees Beira little, and she speaks less when she reutns to the bothy from herding. He begins to think she hates him, resents him; he tells her of his progress and the new things he notices from watching and copying her at work, but she is unimpressed and indifferent. He gathers her flowers and such precious items as can be found in the sparse highlands, but still she is unimpressed by his efforts,with barely even a smile ever granted.

“Why do you keep me here?” he whines at her over another dinner he has made one evening. “You do not seem to enjoy my company at all.” She chews thoughtfully and sips from her water before answering, taking no rush while he all but taps his foot waiting for a reply.

“Am aye fair busy up in yon high places” she says. “So much tae be done wae they herds o horny heided scunners...”

He wags a finger at her, butting in. “I know how many head you keep there, and how long the rounds would take, now I am familiar with this place. You would not be gone for as long as you are, unless you have some other business. What is it?”

She treats him to an icy stare. “Whit would ye ken of my duty, eh? Aye, better ye dinnae. Tis no the kind of thing for the likes of ye.” He petutantly folds his arms and pouts in response.

“You should be able to tell me. I am your...” he starts, but when he turns to deliver whatever cutting remark he was planning, she is suddenly next to him, inches from his face, her one intact eye's knowing stare killing the words in his throat.

“My whit? My nothing, ye ungrateful nine sided hoor. Ah've laid nae claim tae ye and asked nowt o ye but to earn yer keep wae a bit o' graft. Ah'd put ye tae proper labour if ye werenae such a greetin faced wee hing. Who are ye tae come intae ma bothy an dictate tae me, eh?” She jabs a finger into his chest, furious now, and her anger calls back the images of Brigid, when he incurred her anger. The words, foolish though they are, run to his throat and leap forth before he has time to stop them.

“You are so like her” he says, and knows instantly it was a regrettable choice. Beira screams, a keening nothing like Brigids; not grief, but incredulous rage and pride and the burn of vengeance. She grabs him and hauls him outside into the starry, wintry night.

“'Mon then, if ye want tae be sumthin' tae me! Ah'll show ye whit am are, oh aye” she cajoles, kicking him to his knees. “Noo stay doon, ye wee bastard o' a bard that ye think o' yersel as, an clap yer een oan whit ah really am.”

She raises a great mountain from the earth, carrying him up on it into the clouds. She becomes larger herself as they go, until she is in her Cailleach giantess form, her skin taking on a faint blue sheen. She casts her hands in either direction and the mountain ranges fold outward, all cruel spines. Raising her arms high, she summons a single great lightning bolt which strikes her and sears away his vision; when it returns, she holds a great hammer, as long as she is tall now, a savage look of glee on her face.

Storms break behind her, the rain slucing down in a deluge; she stands bestriding the mountain, swinging her hammer down to smash it asunder and create ever more complex lithic arrangements. She stomps around the range, yelling and cursing and laughing, repeatedly applying the tender mercies of her weapon to the land.

“Who dae ye think keeps out aw'ra bogles and beasties that wud burn us oot, eh? The Morrigan kens strategy, but the line is mine tae watch, ye see now. That's where ah go, an ah didnae want ye tae know, cos ye'd ah run ahent me like a wee lamb, an ye'd no be able tae hack it. Yer saft, and ye cannae be saft wae terrors tha' like o yon in the black dreecht o'er eh wa'. Dae ye ken why, noo?”

“Yes, Beira. I'm sorry, I... tbis place has been like heaven, and I assumed you were too. I have robbed you of your own choosing, foisted myself upon you.”

“Nah, ye huvnae. Ah chose. A daft wee lamb droont in a burn? Happens aw'ra time, if the ewe disnae mind her bairns. Jez' the wheel oan it's way furrit another league. There's aye mair lambs... but yer nae wee lamb, even if yer no a stag either. Ah had tae see whit ye were fur masel', and ye were a right useful hing til aw'ra sudden ye decided to start this greetin' an waily waily.”

She says the words in full intent, but by the end a slight mischevious smile dresses her face. He says nothing, unable to look at her, red with shame. She laughs like an icy gale, and the world shifts, so she is sitting cross legged before him; no longer world-bestriding in form, but still retaining her presence, her essential nature of the unforgiving, spartan land.

“Aye, ye are a bright wee caundle, tis true” she says. “Ye didnae even ask me tae speak, an just took ma silence as a bare wa' tae fill wae yer ain reflections, thinkin o' where ye were wae'oot thinking o' where ye are. Ah'm no like mah sister, ye ken. Shes a roarin' big besom an' I wish her the joy o' her ways, but thats no me, eh. So dance if ye can, here, noo.”

He looks around, at the peaks she has crafted, at their savage beauty, and realises that she is as much a smith, healer and artist as Brigid, yet in a way that is uniquely her own. Her art is more brutalist, more sparse, but eternal. She is not the canvass: she is the pins that hold it to the frame, the secure edge, the wall against collapse, and he cannot try to make her otherwise and honestly call it love.

“Can I bide here with ye, Beira, an be mair tae ye than jez' a hing fur the workin'?” he says, finding his grace at last.

“Aye, ye may” she says, and leans down, planting a feather kiss on his forehead. “Ye've a heid that wants fer another short plank, but ye'll learn yet.”

Just a little one for fun.

As students of the Lore will know, there is not really a specifically Scottish canon about the Tuath De Danaan and the Gaelic gods, just borrowings and derivatives of the same lore the Irish brought here with them (with, of course, the patchwork assembly of Norse, Brittonic and Anglic influences that is Scotland mixed through it by the telling).

So I said to myself, I said, "what if it did, but it was a characteristically Weegie tale, written in an Irvine Welsh slang-heavy way"?

Behold, the Cath Maige Tenement, a great folkloric cycle of the taking of the Kelvinside! Prepare yersel' tae be fashed an scunnert by 'ra Glesga patter! If a word seems complete nonsense, just say it exactly as written; some of them are more like giving words to the sound than how that word might strictly be considered to be spelled, even in broad Scottish English.

(I have used Morgan Diamler's translation of the Cath Maige as a base here, for anyone interested).

1 ­­The Tathies wur oot in the east end o’ra city a’ Glesga, swottin o’er magic an illusion an other pure goth pish like that.

2 In four schemes they had done their schoolin like mad speccy bookwurms, that is Shettleston an' the Calton, Parkheid an Bellshill.

3 Fae Parkheid came the stane Lia Feck, which was in Paradise. It wud gie oot a pure gallus cry whene’er the Bhoys would take tae ra field.

4 Fae the Calton by the manky broon watter o' the Clyde came the basebaw bat that Lugh had. Nae big bastard polis could haud his stanes when it wiz in Lughs hand.

5. Fae Shettleston came Nuada’s chib. Nae ither bam could haud oot when Nuada would take the great blade oot fae the tap o' his sports socks.

6 Fae Bellshill came the Munchy Box aw the Dazza, that contained aw the flavours o' pakora a bam could wish fur, nae short change oan the chicken wans neither, best o' gear. No even the heftiest bunch o' stoners could go away fae it an still want fur a poke o' chips.

7 [indcipherable bampot scrawl – Ed.]

8 The Tathies made a truce wae the Formies o’er eh watter, where they were in Ibrox and Govan, Shawlands an' Pollok, and agreed they wud aw gang up 'ra west end fur a rammy, an' divide it in two between them; at the big rave efter, wae aw'body oan the wreck the hoose juice and the tunes bangin, wee Ethne (who was the wean o' Balor, the Big Yin among the Formies) got aff wae Ciaran son of Danny C (who wiz best among the Tathies at sewin up a chib mark). She had a braw wee bairn, who wiz Lugh that ah told ye aboot earlier, mind?

9 The Tathies got in aw their robbed motors and headed west, ready tae batter the shite oot o the Firhill Young Team. They burned them aw, so they widnae think tae bolt like big jessies when the rammy started. They were aw chokin for a snout when they got oot the motors, so it seemed like a big mist wiz comin afore em fae aw the durry smoke.

10 The battle o’er the tower blocks wiz fair bloody, an the Tathies skited the Firhill team a pure dillion, so they bolted oot the city for fear of the Tathies makin pan breid of them like they hud tae Eccie, who had been Big Yin of the Firhill team before it aw went tae shite fur them.

11 In that scramble the airm o' Nuada had got chapped aff, so he lost his haun he used fur both chuggin an chibbin, an he was pure ragin aboot it. Danny C made him a new wan though, an it was a braw yin o pure gold, for Crezzie had melted doon aw the bling an sovereign rings o the Tathies tae make it fur him.

12 Though they had won, the Tathies lost many o their best lads and lassies in that rammy.

13 The Firhill lads who hud made it oot o ra city, they went tae the Formies, who let them pass doon oot intae Galloway an get a hoose aff the cooncil there, which is why aw thae doon hamers that come up here are such arseholes, ken?

14 Noo since Nuada had lost his haun an wiznae ony good for throwin shapes at the Savoy anymair, there was a big argy bargy among their wimmen aboot who shud be Big Yin. They said that it wud only be fair that it go tae Beezer, son of wee Elatha fae before, who wuz their ain adopted babby, an that wud make the peace between the teams complete, seein as how his da was the Big Yin of the Formies, who wiz called Big Eck.

15 This is how the birth o Beezer came aboot.

16 One o' their lassies, who wiz called Erin, wiz up 'ra canal one day, lookin oot tae the firth, an she thought it was dead flat and calm lookin that day. Soon she saw a silver canoe, probably nicked fae a nicer scheme, comin up the canal. Oan tap o it stood a big braw lad, she clocked, who wuz kitted oot wae aboot half the four carat gold in aw o Strathclyde, a Burberry skipcap that ye could barely tell came oot the Barras and wiznae the real hing, and some right banger Reeboks.

17 “Here, you're a big honey. How about it, hen?” he sez tae her. “Bolt, ya bam” she says “Ah’ll no winch wae ye, thats clatty.” “Ach, go on doll” he replies.

18 So they pumped red rotten like rabbits, an later she starts greetin like fuck. “Aw whit noo? Whit ye moanin aboot?” he says. “Ye've scunnert me, ya bam, and twice an aw” she says. “Wan is that yer gonnae leg it an leave me alain, an probably no pay the social either, no matter how many polis they send up yer close. Ma team got me aw up in a dream aboot ye, so that ah’ve been a bit o a wee midden an got myself right up the duff.”

19 “Ye neednae fash yersel about either o those, hen” he says, taking aff one of his sovereigns to give her, an told her she must never pawn it fur a bit o cooncil, or sell it doon the Barras, but keep it for the bam whose finger could get intae it.

20 “Aye but” she says “ah still dinnae even ken yer tag.”

21 “Aw hen, ye’ll no be in the dark aboot it ony longer. Big Eck, son of Delboy, Big Yin o the Formie team, has been yer ride the night. An aye, ye will have a bairn, and ye are tae name him Beezer, so that every braw 'hing in the toon, when a'body claps their een on it, will go ‘haw, that’s a pure beezer mate’.”

Tae be continued...

This post is a bit of a long ass ramble, but I just want to get my thoughts on role reversal dynamics (which occupy about 90% of my thought cycles) out in front of some other people who might get it, who might think “damn, me too”. Hopefully not straying into anything marked as forbidden.

Once upon a time, I used to trouble myself endlessly with trying to work out exactly which kind of garden variety “soft momma’s boy nerd with a submissive bent who’s into strong women” (damn you, nineties badass fighting wench tropes!). Part of that’s from being a 2000s goth kid with a knee-jerk need to “punk up” anything into its contrary opposite (a real two edged sword, that instinct), and partly my own nature (ever the thinker, ever the asker of ‘why is this thus?’). Eventually, it clicked that role reversal was the thing that pinned it all together – all the fantasies, all the convoluted imagined scenarios, that’s what it’s always about.

Role reversal to me is a busy intersect between sociopolitics (because men like me, I think, as a rule, would happily see the patriarchy brought down, often having been victims of it ourselves for not fitting the expected mould), love, art (women as the “Eternal Muse” figure, the source of all art and poetry) desire; and, most recently for me, faith as well. Without making this a kink psychology post, because it’s for me a genuine belief and not just a kink honourific – what greater role reversal is there than to abandon the patriarchy of kings, and embrace great queens instead?

My route in was through Robert Graves, of “The White Goddess” fame. For those unfamiliar, he basically proposes (on admittedly shaky historical premises, but the man was a poet) the idea of an ancient matriarchal religion, a single female earth-mother divinity, that was surplanted by the Indo-European, in his view, more sun than moon centric religions we now know as the European pagan faiths (Olympus, Asgard, the Tuath De, etc). Gimbultas – an actual accredited historian and archaeologist – later in her life proposed some similar ideas around a pre Indo-European “Old Europe” society that was wiped away. It’s all very contentious, fantastical, poetic, full of “blood of sacred kings on the snow to make the sun come up” land goddess vibes.

I believe as Oscar Wilde did that it is the privelige of the appreciative man to plagarize, and I went on my own fevered stream of consciousness, trying to write something akin to Graves revelation that was creeping up on me – something about men’s usurpation of what by right belongs to women. It was, in all honesty, a rather tawdry piece, something you’d expect to see in the sci fi pages on AO3. I hit a stumbling block, because I had created this figure of great power but not why or from whence that power came, and I wanted it to be something more than just racy thrills.

And so, the Morrigan – whose name means Great Queen, she of blood and battle who would be thought perhaps the least likely to play the role of Muse - answered, and inserted herself into the story.

I’m still writing. It’s evolved into genuine belief, and worlds in worlds, an entire Yggasdril, stories on every branch, into real faith, because here’s the thing it made me work out – what we call role    reversal could also be called role reclamation. I avoided making her, and all the reflections of her my fevered imagination has dreamed up, just a simple binary reversal of “male character but a woman”, because I feel that’s cheap and reductive (that is to say, women should be women doing things the womans way, not just the same thing as the men). In my humble view, a womans power is not like a mans – it is not overt and showy, it is subtle and irresistable. It is not power at all, but sovereignty – like a queen.

That’s where it all clicked. All the physical and romantic stuff? It wasn’t about domination or submission or being some specific fantasy role, it was about fealty to the sovereignty of a principle, about reversal of the way things are, honestly rather than still through my own male perception, and about bestowing on a woman utter trust in her rule. That’s the ultimate source – all else is joyous reflection of that one principle. Queen, duchess, goddess, madame, mistress, boss – the names change, but the core truth is immutable. She is sovereign, and you are not.

So I say to you, the clearly much younger than I men who might read this – go forth and find yourself a queen, swear fealty to her, and rejoice in her blessing.