In Ireland, which is between the 52nd and 55th parallel north, they do midsummer right. It never really gets completely dark on June 21st and as the sun moves slowly toward and then below the horizon it veers further and further north.
Last Saturday night, the summer solstice, I was watching the sun makes this slow perambulation around the horizon from the window of my apartment in Athlone. Right at midnight the air was rent by a Nazgul scream.
As you may recall from The Lord of the Rings, The Nazgul were evil wraiths, nine former kings now in service to the Dark Lord, Sauron, who searched for Frodo and the Ring of Power on their fell winged mounts or on coal black stallions. In the moments leading up to a pivotal confrontation between Gandalf and Saruman, the elder wizard smugly tells Gandalf, “The Nine have left Minas Morgul. They crossed the River Isen on Midsummers Eve.” Gandalf gasps, “They’ve reached the Shire!”
So when I heard that Nazgul scream from my window on Midsummers night, for a moment I thought, “They’ve arrived!” And then I heard the sound of horses’ hooves pounding the ground. I looked out and about a dozen of the horses boarded behind our apartments were racing around the field, tails raised, snorting, and one of them screaming like a Nazgul in the deep twilight.
That sight brought this line to my mind: “The randy mares of fancy.” Here’s the whole stanza:
My wishes turn to violent
Horses black as coal–
The randy mares of fancy,
The stallions of the soul–
Eager to take the fences
That fence about my soul.
It’s from “London Rain,” by Louis MacNeice, an Irish poet who spent most of his life in Britain. I first heard it on Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Heart, read by Ronnie Drew, backed up by bagpipes.
In the poem, the narrator wonders about logic, lust, and the function of god, and the imagery of horses is used throughout. When logic convinces the speaker that he has nothing to lose:
My lust goes riding horseback
To ravish where I choose,
To burgle all the turrets
Of beauty as I choose.
I find my favorite stanza cropping up in my consciousness more and more often:
Whether the living river
Began in bog or lake,
The world is what was given,
The world is what we make
And we only can discover
Life in the life we make.
I believe that Gandalf would embrace that philosophy. It seems like the perfect sentiment to begin the second half of 2014.
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