ON the eve of official midsummer, a few magical lines from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and a little coda by Duncan Ferguson from Gaeldom, reflecting both the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death and the traditional midsummer solstice’s association with stone circles.
FAIRY:
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire:
I do wander everywhere
Swifter than the moones sphere,
And I serve the Fairy Queen
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be.
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours.
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.
OBERON, KING OF THE FAIRIES:
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamelled skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in. . .
SOMNIUM SOLSTITIALE:
Am bàrd mòr a-measg tùrsachan Leòdhais
(Shakespeare among island megaliths at the summer solstice)
Button the weaver/crofter and spritely Puck
bathed in Hebridean moonlight
hardly slept a comic wink
after A Midsummer Night’s Ceilidh
dreaming eastward from the long island
to the dawn of the longest day
about to cast shadows
amid the standing stones of Callanish
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