Tales from the Wood

A couple of months back I was drawn to purchase a beautiful piece of yew wood from a local sawmill. The richness of colour, the waviness of the grain and the dark knotty inclusions I found irresistible. I had no plan for the wood but somehow it called to me and I knew in time it would have a story to share.

Towards the end of 2017 I had started working more intuitively with wood. Rather than simply burning a chosen image upon the surface I decided to see what stories might be concealed within the grain. I guess the process is one rather akin to cloud watching.

Having completed two pieces using this technique, I returned to my wood store in search of another blank canvas. My hand fell upon the yew wood. Withdrawing it from the stack I noticed what looked like a bird. A heron I thought or maybe a gannet and then quite suddenly it surfaced from the depths of the grain –  a cormorant and to its right a salmon was leaping. But this cormorant was no ordinary cormorant.

No sooner had I commenced working on the piece I began seeing cormorants on the lake behind my house. They are not unknown to frequent the waters but they are a relatively infrequent visitor. Now it seemed I was encountering them on a daily basis.

The fascinating thing about working intuitively is how the story evolves and the cormorant was most certainly evolving. It was no longer the black sleek diving bird that hangs its wings to dry. No, the supreme fisher abhorred by anglers had shapeshifted into a Boobrie.

For those who have never encountered the Boobrie let me enlighten you. The boobrie is a mythological shapeshifting entity said to inhabit the lochs of West Scotland. It most commonly adopts the form of a large cormorant but may also appear as a water bull, horse or large blood sucking insect.

I find the folklore stories about the Boobrie fascinating. Like all stories I sense there is a great deal more lying beneath the words than a scary tale to be shared around the fireside on a cold winter’s eve. Folklore tales have roots that extend back into the mists of time and like the Boobrie have a habit of shapeshifting.

Before Christianity reached the shores of Albion the spirituality of the island’s inhabitants was rooted in nature. Nature worship focused on the worship of nature spirits considered to be behind natural phenomena, for example, celestial objects such as the sun and moon and terrestrial objects such as water and fire.

The Celtic religion was centred on nature worship and consisted of a pantheon of numerous recorded deities. One of those deities was Ceridwen. She was the Welsh Celtic Goddess of inspiration and was an enchantress and shapeshifter.  Stories about her can be found in “The Mabinogion”. Ceridwen was the mother of a hideous son, Morfran, a beautiful daughter, Creirwy and the Welsh bard Taliesin. Morfran literally means sea crow, sea raven, cormorant. One story about Ceridwen tells the tale of her brewing a potion in her cauldron to make Morfran both handsome and wise. Unfortunately, it is Gwion Bach, a servant boy employed to stir the potion, who becomes the unintended recipient. When three drops of the potion fall upon his hand he puts his hand to his mouth to stop the burning and instantly becomes clever, good-looking and capable of changing his shape. Ceridwen is incensed when she discovers what happened and pursues Gwion. They take on various animal forms during the pursuit. Eventually Ceridwen outwits Gwion. He in the form of a grain of corn is swallowed by Ceridwen in the form of a hen. The potion however is not destroyed and Ceridwen becomes pregnant. Gwion is then reborn as the Welsh poet Taliesin.

I think vestiges of this story are found in the tale of the Boobrie. The Boobrie is frequently referred to as looking like a cormorant which links it to Morfran but also possesses shapeshifting abilities that would link it to Ceridwen.  References are also made to the boobrie appearing as a water horse or water bull. Both the horse and the bull have strong spiritual significance in Celtic spirituality. Perhaps the story of the Boobrie was created by Christians in an attempt to stop pagan worshipping practices particularly those related to the worshipping water deities. The Christians found it extremely difficult to stamp out many pagan practices and ended up incorporating many into the Christian religion. This is evidenced by the renaming of many pagan healing wells with the names of Christian saints.