The chase

 Apparently [ie before my time] 15 years ago Mythago wrote their rendition of the famous Welsh legend 'Ceridwen and Taliesin'. Here's a brief synopsis for anyone interested in folklore https://maesyllan-pri.wrexham.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/The-Legend-of-Gwion-and-Ceridwen.pdf. Words were written and dances created and then the side hit a stumbling block. One of the pivotal points in the story is when Ceridwen discovers that her serving boy Gwion Bach has ingested three drops of the potion that she had brewed for her son Morfran. The intention was that the first three drops would bestow great wisdom and in her attempt to catch Gwion the two assume different beast forms as she hunts him down.  A couple of ways had been tried, but abandoned and the whole project mothballed. I and others have put a lot of effort in these last five years or so to bring back our stories and create lots more opportunities for us to perform them. We have already updated/repaired/replaced and made new kit for several stories and it was the turn of this one this year. Back in February I floated the idea of us making appropriate masks, but with no deadline and in the full knowledge that it was going to be quite challenging. We would need to work as a team to a brief and they would have to work as a cohesive set for the audience to be able to follow what's happening.

Well here we are just having passed the Winter Solstice and yesterday at Stonehenge we launched them in public. There have been many hours and people working together to create this lot and you will see our wren is part of it. We are all very pleased with what we have achieved and the feedback has been very positive. We couldn't have done it without one chap having willingly stepped forwardand overseen the whole thing from start to finish. Below we have the prey along the front with the hunters standing in their pairs....wren and hawk, salmon and otter, hound and hare and black hen and grain of corn [fortunately we already had our John Barleycorn kit for that one]. With a bit of lateral thinking we have replaced the original dance with another one which is appropriately called 'Hunting Dance' which allows us to keep the pairs dancing together. It went so well that we've decided to do it again on Boxing Day at one of our favourite local pubs.

[Photo courtesy of Martin Duffy]

The whole thing has been kept under wraps for all these months and it's rather a relief to be able to show people what we've been up to. I'm wearing the hawk mask in the image.

꩜Aril꩜