The Moon and Fourpence

Nothing like a May Full Moon to bring out the more neo-pagan side of the Beaker Folk. I do try to keep them in check. But they're never easy.

So the newly reconstituted Beaker Quire, consisting only of people playing instruments in the list in Psalm 150, finished playing "Mambo de la Luna". And we were all relaxing about "the island where they live for today, cos tomorrow's just too far away". What a lesson that is to us - "consider the lilies" and all that.

But seduced by the beauty of that mad, mad moon as he was, Minsmir ran off into the woods, screaming that henceforth he would love only Diana, huntress of the silver bow.

Bad start to the evening. But worse for Minsmir than we initially imagined. Because he tore into Wodewose Leys, the clearing where the Wodewose likes to go of a moonlit night, and sing sad songs in his far-ancient tongue of the wosemaiden he wooed and won when the earth was young, and the elven folk sang for joy 'neath star-bedecked skies.

And Minsmir, storming in crying out his praises for his new love, so distressed our mournful Wose that he received the butt end of his club, right on the hooter.

I've just discovered that Minsmir is still stuck in Mimosa Wood, cowering in a hollow while Wodewose throws hedgehogs at him. It's not good news for Minsmir, and it's not helping the hedgehogs. But nobody is going to get involved. It is a terrible thing to confront a Wodewose chucking the little creatures of the forest around.

I'm not sure what we learn from this. Maybe that lapsing into paganism is a dangerous thing. Or, at least, that it never does to be an overenthusiastic convert. Nobody ever ended up with his bum in a hedge, being pelted with hedgehogs, for lighting a tea light.