Here’s an poem that I wrote for the 2024 Imbolc edition of the Òran Mór Celtic E‐Zine that celebrates the awakening of the year.
Awakening

The adventure goes on …
Here’s an poem that I wrote for the 2024 Imbolc edition of the Òran Mór Celtic E‐Zine that celebrates the awakening of the year.
Once upon a time, long, long, ago, there was a Celtic band called Noctiluca. Now, you might say, Noctiluca is not a Celtic name. No, it is not. Unfortunately, no one in the band spoke Gaelic. Noctiluca was the best they could come up with. One of the band members was an oceanographer, and Noctiluca, meaning “night lights” in Latin, is the name of a genus of microscopic phytoplankton that produce bioluminescence at night. Go figure, eh?
Here’s an article that I wrote for the 2023 Lughnasadh edition of the Òran Mór Celtic E‐Zine that looks into the Scottish legend of John Barleycorn and the traditional songs associated with it.
As we spiral through the cycles of the seasons on our homestead, Lughnasadh comes to us as a time of balance … between sacrifice and blessing, hard work and reward, safety and danger.
The Hawthorn, a tree that displays a prolific splendour of white or pink flowers at the beginning of May, is known by a variety of different names, such as “The May Tree“, “The Beltane Tree“, “The May Blossom“, “The Whitethorn“, “The Quick“, or simply the “May“.
I’ve been reading a lot of Irish mythology in the last little while. Looking at the English translations of the Old Irish (Gaelic), it is easy to see that many of these stories were once oral poems (probably originally translated from Proto-Celtic by the Christian monks). That got me to thinking about poetry …
Just for fun, here’s a little historical fiction short story that I put together recently, based on the Irish Iron Age culture.
I wrote this little color piece for an e-zine back in August. It captures some of the joys and fears of summertime on our homestead.
Today is Samhain, or as most people know it, Halloween. What better way to spend a Halloween afternoon than on a hike through the damp fall woods, battling through spiderwebs and hunting weird mushrooms.
Beltane is the name for the Gaelic May Day festival. which is held on May 1st, or about halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice.