Fairy Funerals

 


Poet, Painter, Engraver and Visionary William Blake (1757-1827) witnessed a fairy funeral 

"I was walking alone in my garden, there was a stillness amongst the branches and flowers and a more than common sweetness in the air; I heard a low and pleasant sound, and I knew not whence it came.   At last I saw a procession of creatures of the size and colour of green and gray grasshoppers, bearing a body laid out on a rose leaf, which they buried with songs, and then disappeared.   It was a fairy funeral". 

The mystical, crisp, clear days are over - dampness fills the air.   The soil beneath my feet is wet, sodden.   Snow static on top of the high fells.      

The past few days have been perfect.   Frozen ground, blue skies, sunshine.   The preeminent time to prune trees and shrubs.   To remove dead, diseased, displaced, damaged wood.    Incisor cuts above the bud with clean, sloping cuts. 

After, with the debris, I built wildlife and fairy habitats.   Twisted stems and boughs, used trees as anchors, to fashion nooks, to craft crannies.   Homes for insects and hedgehogs in our field.  I weave branches with stems, create haunts for imps, pixies, fairies, goblins too.

The effort exhilarating.   The atmosphere freezing.

My resolve for the new year - to find fairies.    My concern to protect insects and organisms from the slice of shears, the snip of secateurs.

We want no fairy funerals here.   


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