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