Candle Lighting

New Year Stories

We call you Hoymen up
To our Hogmanay flame
From silent kirkyards- Mans
Gone over the crag face
On a flawed rope
After some scabby sheep;
Sander whose cormorant eye a blizzard sealed
At Braga rock
The day  Nell  was cloven;
Jack with the twenty hives,
The pale plunder of the Coolags in every hoard -
( A broken comb would sweeten your whisky cups )
Andrew who married 8 barren wives
And buried seven
And had the cold hands of a girl to close his eyes;
Jeems who fiddled drunk at every hearth
In the five islands
For weddings funeral, births;
Tam of the Hundred Whales.
You who by nature or bad luck are dead,
This winter night again
We summon from the earth
Before the seed,
You have unyoked out of sun and rain,
Our brutal wheel of bread,
And are lords of legend, beyond change and chance;
We are the shadows of the brimming board,
When the lamp pales
And every story is told
And the last bottle is dry,
Be off, quickly get back
To your good silence,

George Mackay Brown

A very enjoyable and satisfying New Year to all you good Blip pals XX






was cloven