Midsummers Day

I have been searching for a poem to post with some piccies to make a Midsummers Day post in the forums and came across this epic by David Hazell. It is written about the area in which I live and I see the hill it mentions every time I go into town - it does indeed stand like a massive great whale in the landscape.

Theres a tiny village at the foot of this hill and I once stayed there to look after a friends aged granny when she came out of hospital, walking the dog out there was an eerie experience cos the village is famed for witchcraft - The Pendle Witches story makes for good reading if anybody likes their history of England.

Heres the poem;


On The Witching Hill At Midsummer.

The path was steep but stepped for ease, as we mounted the flank of ‘The Whale’.
Our mission was to test the truth, of another old Pendle tale.
For Pendle hill is a mound of myths, and fantasys and dreams,
Where witches ride, and ghosts abide, and a wind whipped Bean Sidhe screams.
With noble and forbidding brow, and broad of back and shoulder,
The ancient altar hill was shaped by mighty ‘frost giant’ moulder.
Looming up from England’s heart, as if it heaves with pride
The ‘Old Man’ glowers sternly oe’r the pastured riverside.
We pegged our sheet on the plateau, with the sky still full of light
And waited on the magic hill to greet the Gods of night.

A massive Moon swept the southern sky, like honey in a jar.
A groaning glow, that challenged, the light of the evening star.
The Sun slid into the western sea, throwing up colours and shade;
Amber, gold and cobalt blue; coral and beige and jade.
Then as the arc celestial dimmed, to navy blue, from grey
The marchers of the heavens came to boldly stride their way.
Mirfak elbows clear a path for Perseus to steer.
She goat, Capella’s glistening bleat heralds the Charioteer.
A bright eye gleams on Lyra’s harp; Vega , the eagle of stone.
Cassiopeia, still vain in her chain, spins on her captive throne.

I sat musing on the summit mound, and watched the starlight bloom,
And remembered that my haunches rested on an ancient tomb.
I thought of how those bronze age folk, buried at this site
Must have seen those self-same stars, on long gone, Midsummer nights.
There were two of us at the vigil; yet I’d read how in days gone by,
A healthy host of hundreds had gazed at the morning sky.
Dear old Jessica Lofthouse; had written the tale of tradition.
And she’d told the tale of the dubious sight that had brought us on the mission.
From Pendle’s height at Midsummer sunrise, she’d claimed one would behold,
York Minster windows, reflecting the Sun, shining a reddish gold.

It’s seventy miles from Pendle to York, so like many we had pondered,
And wondered if old Jessica’s mind, just like her feet had wandered.
But come the dawn, if skies were clear, we’d put it to the test.
And we fixed a compass point to York, at the highest point of the crest.
A steady chill had gripped the air, there were wisps of cloud and rain.
So we brewed some tea, and I took a stroll around the upper terrain.
I could see the glow of great cities, and towns, making orange, the sky;
Manchester, Liverpool, Burnley and Blackburn, easy to pick with the eye.
But to the north, just the darkened shape of the dreaming Bowland fells.
And north and east in the purple night, the limestone moorland swells.