The longest shadows

A ghost story on midwinter's eve

Growing up I thought it was strange that the lyric “there’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago” played in the classic 1963 song “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year”. We corralled all of the dark spooky things into Halloween, a neat little box we could step in and out of in one day.

But now we know the spirits of old didn’t just come out on All Hallow’s Eve.

kate gardiner clearlight

once described “the veil” not so much as a wall that was lifted once a year, but rather like a needle that threaded in and out of our realms of existence constantly. We are never too far from the other side.

This is why our ancestors honored their ancestors not just once a year, but on each liminal point of the wheel: solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarters. Every new moon was also a time for creating another pass with the needle.

And how better to honor them than with stories? I’m reading Other Birds right now by Sarah Addison Allen, a story about the ghosts around us and the people who carry them.

Stories aren’t fiction. Stories are fabric. They’re the white sheets we drape over our ghosts so we can see them.

Stories give shape and life to things that are thought to be long gone. There is a belief in old Slavic lore that a spirit stays tethered between the earthly and heavenly realms as long as someone on earth still knows their name. Only once they are completely forgotten do they go to a place far into the cosmos where they are reborn as a new soul. Stories then, are a way to keep them close to the family lineage.

Then of course, there are the ghosts that are conjured up to teach lessons and test our wits. Maybe they are some stranger who died before their time, or a spirit sent from another world who was never wholly human at all.

In honor of the winter solstice and its ghosts, I want to share one of those stories with you tonight. There is an old folk superstition that says we should only tell stories of spirits at night. To tell them by daylight would bring ill fortune. So I hope this little tale will find you cozy somewhere in the dark, warmed by a fire or a candle.

This is an interpretation of a story that was published in Tales of Fairies and of the Ghost World in 1895 on various Gaelic peasant folk tales in Southern Ireland. In Gaelic lore, the taidhbhse or tais are those spirits that live in limbo, perhaps due to unfinished business or a strong connection to one of the living. This is a story of the in-between and how fate bends and twists within it.

Rosie and the Yule log

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Many midwinters ago in the county Cork there was a young man named John who was courting three ladies at the same time. His two sisters who saw this as distasteful confronted him one day, telling him he must choose just one.

But John was still unsure. All three had good fortunes and were unique in their own ways.

"I can't tell you that," said John, "till I find which of them has the best wish for me."

"How will you know?" asked the other.

"I will tell you that as soon as any person will die in the parish."

In three weeks time, just before the winter solstice, a man died.

John, still unsure of who he might choose as a wife, attended the funeral and stood for a long time beside the grave. His final decision was that he couldn’t make a decision. So, he took a blackthorn branch and left it on top of the tomb.

Now, there are many myths and powers associated with the legendary blackthorn tree in Ireland. On one hand, it symbolizes strength, protection and purification. On the other hand, it can be a trickster, causing bad luck to those that cross it or turned into a weapon in the wrong hands. John could not know what the blackthorn had in mind for him that night as he walked back home.

Later that day he went to the neighbor’s house where there was a festive party at hand. The three girls he was courting; Mary, Peggy and Kate all happened to be there too. John, ever the attention-seeker, kept intentionally quiet that evening until the girls asked him what was troubling him.

"Oh I am sorry for my beautiful blackthorn," said he.

"Did you lose it?"

"I did not," said John, "but I left it on the top of the tomb next to the grave of the man who was buried today, and whichever of you three will go for it is the woman I'll marry. Well, Mary, will you go for my stick?" asked he.

"Faith, then, I will not," said Mary.

"Well, Peggy, will you go?"

"If I were without a man forever," said Peggy, "I wouldn't go."

"Well, Kate," said he to the third, his pride already wounded, "will you go for my stick? If you go I'll marry you."

"Stand to your word," said Kate, "and I'll bring the stick."

Kate immediately left the party to walk the long three miles to the graveyard. Her boots loudly crunching the icy snow couldn’t drown out the wind that howled the half whispers of the departed. She shivered, beginning to question this ridiculous quest. It’s not that she was in love with John, she just liked a challenge. And all she had to do was retrieve a simple stick right? So on she pressed.

To her relief, she quickly found the fresh grave and the tomb with the blackthorn branch on top. As soon as she placed her hand on the blackthorn a voice in the darkness sent a chill to her bones.

"Leave the stick where it is and open this tomb for me."

Kate trembled with dread, but seemed to be out of control of her own body as she opened the heavy door to the tomb. Whether it was the will of the blackthorn or something deeper, she didn’t know. From within the coffin, the voice came again.

“Now take this lid off and carry me upon your back.”

Once again she felt herself move without her consent. Once the lid was open she forced herself to peer in. There was the dead man. But he had a strange eerie glow around the edges, like he wasn’t quite there at all. His eyes bolted open and a slow smile crept across his lips.

Afraid to refuse him, Kate lifted the taidhbhse onto her back and walked in the direction he pointed. After about a mile, Kate thought that the strange weight on her back may kill her. Finally they came across a small snow swept village with puffs of smoke still trickling out the chimneys.

"Take me to the first house," said the dead man.

She took him.

“Oh, we cannot go in here," said he, when they came near. "The people have clean water inside, and they have hawthorn hanging from their doors and windowsills (for hawthorn is one of the most sacred trees of protection in Gaelic lore), too. Take me to the next house."

She went to the next house.

"We cannot go in there," said he, when she stopped in front of the door divining the clean water and hawthorn within that house as well.

She went to the third house.

"Go in here," said the dead man."There is neither clean water nor hawthorn in this place; we can stop in."

They went in.

He demanded she sit him next to the fire and bring him something to eat and drink. She put him in a chair and brought him oatmeal, the only thing she could find in the house. As he claimed, there was only dirty water to be found here.

“Bring me to the room upstairs girl.”

They went up to the room, where three young men were sleeping in their beds. Kate felt nauseous as she had to hold the dish while the taidhbhse drew their blood.

"Let the father and mother have that," said he, "in return for the dirty water" meaning that if there was clean water in the house, he wouldn't have taken the blood of the young men. He closed their wounds in the way that there was no sign of a cut on them. "Mix this now with the meal, get a dish of it for yourself and another for me."

She got two plates and put the oatmeal in it after mixing, and brought two spoons. Kate wore a handkerchief on her head; sly as she was, she put this under her neck and tied it. She was pretending to eat, but she was putting the food to hide in the handkerchief until her plate was empty.

"Have you eaten your share?" asked the dead man.

"I have," answered Kate with her fingers crossed.

“Come now and take me back to the place you found me then.”

She rolled up the food in the handkerchief. There was a deep hole in the wall of the kitchen by the door, where the bar was slipped in when they barred the door. Into this hole she put the handkerchief. Going back she shortened the road by going through a big field at command of the dead man. When they were at the top of the field she asked if there was any cure for those young men whose blood was drawn?

"There is no cure," said he, "except one. If any of that food had been spared, three bits of it in each young man's mouth would bring them to life again, and they'd never know of their death."

"Then," said Kate in her own mind, "that cure is to be had."

"Do you see this field?" asked the dead man.

She looked over the slightly rolling land covered in snow, shining brightly under the winter moon. "I do."

"Well there is as much gold buried in it as would make rich people of all who belong to you. Do you see the three leachtans (piles of small stone)? Underneath each pile of them is a pot of gold."

The dead man looked around for a while. Then Kate went on, without stopping, till she came to the wall of the graveyard. “Put me into the coffin where you found me. Take your time and settle me well. I cannot meddle with you now, and 'tis sorry I am to part with you.

That blackthorn that you came for tonight to this graveyard was the lucky stick for you, but if you had any thought of the danger that was before you, you wouldn't be here. Settle me carefully and close the tomb well behind you."

She set him in the coffin and closed the lid tightly. She grabbed the trickster blackthorn branch and started home. It was only then, after hearing the final words of the taidhbhse, that she realized how much danger she had been in. She could have wound up in the coffin with him if the blackthorn had deemed it so. But luck was on her side tonight and she did not look back.

As the solstice night burned to ashes, Kate slept deeply into the new season. It was only when the news spread the next day of the three dead young men that she woke. Still tired from the night’s journey, she wandered to the scene where the mother and father were screeching about wildly, having no idea how all three of their young sons had passed in the night.

But Kate did not cry. She went up to the father who was wringing his hands and howling into the sky. "Be quiet," said Kate. "Control yourself."

"How can I do that, my dear girl, and my three fine sons lying dead in the house?"

"What would you give," asked Kate, "to the person who would bring life to them again?"

"Don't be vexing me," said the father.

"I’m not vexing or trifling you," said Kate. "I can put the life in them again."

"If it was true that you could do that, I would give you all that I have inside the house and outside as well."

"All I want from you," said Kate, "is the eldest son to marry, if he would have me, and Gort na Leachtan (the field of the stone heaps) as fortune."

"My dear, you will have that from me with the greatest blessing."

"Give me the field in writing from yourself, whether the son will marry me or not."

He gave her the field in his handwriting. She told all who were inside in the wake-house to go outside the door. Some were laughing at her and more were crying, thinking she was mad. She bolted the door inside, and went to the place where she left the handkerchief, found it, and put three bites of the oatmeal and the blood in the mouth of each young man. As soon as she did that, the three got their natural color, and they looked like men sleeping. She opened the door, then called on all to come inside, and told the father to go and wake his sons.

Sure enough, they all walked down the stairs starry eyed and dazed, yet none the wiser of what had transpired the night before. The father and mother wept with joy while Kate slipped past the stunned onlookers silently.

That day she met John.

“Did you find my stick?”

"Find your own stick," said she, "and never speak to me again in your life."

She was over his games, over his noncommittal ways, over his fickle feelings. She had tricked the taidhbhse and given life where there was none. She could be the master of her own destiny. (And just like that, the last of John’s three love interests was lost to the wind. The blackthorn rustled with laughter)

The eldest son of the three nearly lost boys fell in love with Kate and they were married. The field she had requested also became hers. For three weeks they enjoyed a pleasant life without trouble or toil.

“This will not do for us; we must be working,” Kate said finally. “Come with me tomorrow and I'll give yourself and brothers plenty to do, and my own father and brothers as well."

She took them the next day to one of the stone heaps in Gort na Leachtan. "Throw these stones to one side," said she.

They thought that she was losing her senses, but she told them that they'd soon see for themselves what she was doing. They went to work and kept at it till they had six feet deep of a hole dug. They met with a flat stone three feet square and an iron hook in the middle of it. They lifted it to find a pot of gold, just like the dead man had said. More gold was dug from the remaining piles of stones.

Finally Kate, with her steadfast husband, fields for growing food and gold to sustain them in hard times, rested, never forgetting to hang her hawthorn branches over the thresholds. She smiled as she looked out at the gentle hills of Cork. She had gambled with fate and won. The gold foretold by the taidhbhse passed on through seven generations of Kate’s kin.

To this day the blackthorn tree overlooks that little old graveyard, scheming and dreaming on the long solstice nights. No one ever found out what business or passions had the taidhbhse longing to walk the cold earth again. Maybe he was so new to the grave that he wanted just one last romp through the snow. Or maybe he was called by the blackthorn to test cunning Kate. Either way, be watchful of the long shadows that are cast on midwinter’s night. There is magic afoot.

Much love,

Val

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