DANCING A WALTZ ON ALL SOULS NIGHT

No time...no time...things are gettin' hairy around here for Halloween.
Fortune Cookies cannot solve all our problems.
I have bought a Magic Eight Ball.
The Celtic Festival of Samhaim calls for the Old God to die. This begins the New Year.
Samhain occurs after the last day of summer and before the first day of winter - when the veils between the worlds are at their thinnest, when those souls who had passed could, if they wished, return to the land of the living, when the usual laws of time and space are suspended.
For six weeks, we are on our own, living godless on last years fruits.
Even now the leaves begin to fall and the trees go bare.
"Stars grow cold beneath the glass. " S.K.

And this, from the album "The Visit"on Quinlan Road Records.

ALL SOULS NIGHT
Bonfires dot the rolling hillsides
Figures dance around and around
To drums that pulse out echoes of darkness
Moving to the pagan sound.
Somewhere in a hidden memory
Images float before my eyes
Of fragrant nights of straw and of bonfires
And dancing till the next sunrise.

I can see the lights in the distance
Trembling in the dark cloak of night
Candles and lanterns are dancing, dancing
A waltz on All Souls Night.


Figures of cornstalks bend in the shadows
Held up tall as the flames leap high
The green knight holds the holly bush
To mark where the old year passes by.
Standing on the bridge that crosses
The river that goes out to the sea
The wind is full of a thousand voices
They pass by the bridge and me.



I can see the lights in the distance
Trembling in the dark cloak of night
Candles and lanterns are dancing, dancing
A waltz on All Souls Night.

"This piece was inspired by the imagery of a Japanese tradition which celebrated the souls of the departed by sending candle-lit lanterns out on waterways leading to the ocean, sometimes in little boats; along with the imagery of the Celtic All Souls Night celebrations, at which time huge bonfires were lit not only to mark the new year, but to warm the souls of the departed." loreena mckinnet