Wassail

Tenacious Tasmania

One hideously early morning in July we left our fair territory to explore Tasmania. I had been looking forward to it. To my Australian friends (and several of my English ones over the phone), I’ve been moaning a lot about the Australian winter. Fie, woman! I hear you say! Winter days drenched in glorious sunshine, frequently topping 15 degrees? Even the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (ubiquitously ‘BOM’ on everyone’s phone, which sounds less authoritative) recommends UV protection for an hour a day in the middle of winter. So what the feck is my problem? And what has that got to do with Tasmania?

We’ve all heard of the phenomenon ‘hygge’ that Ikea’s made a whole bloody industry out of (stick this post into a word doc – you’ll see the Danish word is so much an accepted commercial part of our language it doesn’t even come up as a spelling mistake). The Dutch have a word for it too; ‘gezellig,’ (now Microsoft doesn’t like that one) and these words evoke a very specific kind of notion to their native speakers of blankets, fires, hot chocolate, books, safety, friendship, and smiles. And before the British lament their anaemically deficient vocabulary, the English language has a word for it too: cosy.

I’ve always been fascinated untranslateables, ever since I travelled Europe, and my aunt bought a book about them called ‘In Other Words…’ (which I can’t find; which one of you bastards has it…). I can identify no Italian word that conveys the ‘cosy’ sentiment. But I bet in the rough and aggressive half French sounds of the Piedmontese dialect just south of the Alps, they got a word for it. Any country that habitually buries itself under winter’s grey blanket for a solid sixth months has this need for coziness. It contrasts necessarily to the misery of winter; you need first to battle through rain driven horizontal by 50k/h winds to reach a place of safety where you will curl with relief into a large chair, huddle a blanket over you, drink tea, read books, encourage anyone foolish enough to get up to light some candles and bring more tea, and be happy. The sort of thing where if a beam of sunlight peeps into the red-bathed warmth, you almost regret it. Go away, you think, you’re interrupting the cosy.

People who have winter in their souls wallow in it. It’s the best thing about winter. Admittedly, there are the virtuous days where silver morning frost trembles under a weak yellow sun and you tramp through the forest and see deer capering in the shadows. But then you deem yourself sufficiently exercised and thankfully head home, fully justified to sit about on your arse for the rest of the week. Winter is rest. You can’t be out and about doing things all the time, you hibernate, you don’t feel like exploring and adventuring, and you stay cozy and sit it out, spending more time with friends over pub lunches by roaring fires and congratulate yourself for having achieved even that. And of course, in the middle of it all, piercing the misery, are the winter celebrations (Christmas), where boaters give each other a log from their own store on Christmas Eve, people get together to eat and drink, you’re justified starting on the old bucks fizz at 10am, beautiful decorations cheer us up and we are cosy together while the wind shouts outside.

So how does this all work for a nation that mostly isn’t troubled by winter and even those few states that are don’t have the month-long celebration to welcome them in from the hungry teeth of frost?

Well, they mostly just screw their eyes up tight and wait for it to be over.

So I was looking forward to truly wallowing in winter in ‘deepest darkest Tassie’ as it has been described to me. I was going to dance Morris at the Huon Valley Midwinter Festival and I was going to drink and be merry.

So it rained a lot. That’s ok, gives you an excuse to retire to the pub. But the only time one transfers from cosy to bleak is when you can’t actually get out of the rain, as was rather the case here, which is not what I meant about wallowing in winter at all. The accumulated sides practised the processional dance on a dangerously slight incline behind the shed where we stashed all our stuff at the festival, and several of us took a tumble. Throughout the weekend, there was much falling over in the mud for Morris dancers but all the jigging about does keep you warm.

The festival was really beautiful. Willie Smith’s Cider began four generations ago in the Huon Valley in Tasmania by Willie Smith (whose parents had arrived here at the expense of her Majesty) when he planted the first tree in 1888. Back then, the Huon Valley exported apples all over the empire and was known as The Apple Isle (did you know that? I didn’t know that), and they got creative when markets changed (that’s free trade) and went to making organic cider. Our friends told us something about Granny Smith of this family being the woman who grew the titular apple…we could find no evidence of this on google, but the cider was delicious. I’m not a huge cider drinker, but I loved every drop. The Huon Valley itself is beautiful; sweeping tall hills, forests, mountains and eye achingly green; and the festival site was the best place to enjoy it. Morris dancers, and Morris groupies (!) were provided FREE accommodation for the duration of the festival in a nice little hotel, free buses took us to the grounds and back, and we got magical red wrist bands that meant you could drink as MUCH CIDER AS YOU WANT FOR FREE. This was a staggering boon, and, I hoped, sufficient compensation for Yates enduring a whole weekend of Morris. There were about four tented stages, a feasting tent with splendid food options from curry to fish, cosy little bars and it was all brilliantly decorated. Apples were the main adornment, and I shudder for the people who must have contracted apple-based fatigue from threading hundreds of apples onto single wires that were then hung as beautiful baubles absolutely everywhere. There were little fires around and a dirty great bonfire in the middle. It did rain and it was cold, and there was little getting out of it, but it did not dampen my revels as I capered and fucked up dance after dance (never mind – it’s only Cotswolds), glugged cider and swanned around in an apple haze. The wassailing ceremony is apparently the biggest in the world, and all 50 or so of us processed to the apple trees (4 sort of separated ceremonial little ones at the top of a slope, almost like a stage) carrying torches or eucalyptus branches and sang and shouted to welcome the spirits and scare away evil and I loved every minute of it.

Yates’ experience was, er, somewhat different. He spent much of the day shivering over a book, waiting for bands to start (there were awkwardly long gaps between acts and he even caught himself saying ‘thank goodness for the Morris really…) and the free booze didn’t warm him up as much as the dancing did me. Still. We watched a great act – Ruben Reeves, check him out – and he did a public duty of warming up 100 people in the middle of winter by getting them to do first a circle pit, then a dance off, and we rocked the hell out until the tent was filled with people stripped to their waists with the little pile of jumpers and coats that we all remember from our club days piled up in front of the stage. Awesome.

After the joys of the festival, we packed our mud sodden bells and hankies away and looked forward to a few days of holiday to really soak up the cosy. Away from tents, and closer to solid buildings that serve beverages. I had this conviction that the place we had booked on Bruny Island (beautiful place off the coast just south east of Hobart) had a log burner and I was excited to cuddle up by it. I do miss my old log burner on the boat. We went to Bonorong wildlife sanctuary, laughed at kookaburras, cuddled Kangaroos and stroked wombats and koala bears. Total win. Then we sped off to the Island of Bruny!

It seemed odd to me that after getting off the mainland to explore a small island, we then left that island to explore another, yet smaller island. I had a sort of Russian doll effect – like how many small islands do I have to visit before I find the final one? Anyway, this place is foodie heaven. They got an oyster place called ‘Get Shucked’ (or as I kept calling it in my infinite coolness, ‘what the shuck?’), they got a place really dedicated to whey….and make beer and cheese, they got a honey place, they got vineyards. I was excited. See previous post for my Australian food adventures which had eventually led me to this heady place.

Yates wasn’t as excited as me about oysters (I again refer you to his wry comments on the matter of molluscs recorded in the previous post), certainly not a whole dozen of them, but one set of the 12 was lightly battered and deep fried and what the hell’s not to like about that? I slurped down a couple with great delight, then seized another that was cooked with a little chorizo and a wonderful broth which I slung down my neck – imagine my horror when I discovered it was bloody hot, of course, wasn’t it. The plain, raw ones with lemon were me fav though. Then we hopped back in the car and wheel spun out of there down the (only) road about a k or 2 and got to the beer place where we tasted a cheese so marvellously soft it was making a run for the door, and I generously had a beer flight of 4 so driver Yates could enjoy a sip of each while I tidied the rest. I am all selfless kindness! Then we drove on to the southern half of the island which is separated from the north by a long thin and typically Australian named ‘neck.’ This was epic – sea on both sides of you, Tasmania to the north west and Fuck All till Antartica to the south east. Apparently there is a fairy penguin rookery on said neck as well (this in fact, is not true, they don’t exist) and we sat on a viewing platform as the sun set and we watched the moon rise silvery gold and full over the waves and gild them in glowing pearls and it was beautiful beautiful and I wept and we sat there for an hour and not one fucking penguin did we see. Please see above well researched fact in parenthesis. So stiff and cold with icy bums and dead legs, we tottered back to the car and headed for our little hotel.

Sadly, all the misguided conviction in the world won’t magic up a woodburner if there simply isn’t one. So wallowing in cosy winter was actually sitting in a large, soulless, breeze block draughty bar with a fire that was going out being scowled at by the two staff on duty until we got the hint and pissed off. We did not write them a good review.

But Bruny Island is ubiquitously beautiful: forested in deep green eucalyptus, edged with glorious wild and ravaged beaches that were so shallow, waves crashed up them for miles in white froth, and the gorgeous curve of Adventure bay that poured rainbows off the crests of waves fringed with foreign trees, trod by plover and fairy wrens with wallabies lurking nearby in unspoilt beauty brought home to me more than ever that I Am On The Other Side Of The World.

Then Yates made me get in the car and drive back to Hobart.

Hobart is not as beautiful as Bruny Island. It’s not as beautiful as Canberra for that matter. Not a lot of trees or parks. Certainly no cycle paths, and there is a madness of 4 lanes per narrow road. The good gentleman described it as ‘like a shitty regional English town.’ I mean no disrespect to our dear Hobartians. The harbour was splendid, there were lovely old buildings and lovely old (but still draughty) pubs with fires. We spent a hell of a long time in the Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery and I got all enraged about Aboriginal murder and dispossession (endlessly) and then we visited the Penitentiary museum and I got equally enraged about the depraved treatment and enslavement of convicts. God. I’m tired of my soap box when there is so much cruelty that continues in the world. But fucken….whipping people to death or at least until their skin rots and maggots wriggle in their very backs and they vomit at their own smell, and the Black Line where indigenous tribes were routinely wiped out…genocide and cruelty is our history in this country. And we disengage and think oh well people are all dicks and hide in the forest, but climate change is coming for those too and they’ll all burn because of the aforementioned assessment about people. Australians proud of their white heritage, that through immeasurable fortitude and endurance survived the sheer miserable cruelty inflicted upon them through the horrors of greed that turn humans into slaves must, surely must agree that greed is the enemy, greed is cruel and never, never seek to visit that on others and become the thing that is despised. Go in love my friends. Always find out first what we like about each other, before you find out things you disagree with. Because then, ah-ha, we can’t be lazy, we’re stuck, we already like each other and are forced to take a more nuanced approach to untangling and hearing each other’s stories.

After all that education about the misery of what one human can do to another and reflecting that world wars never ended it either, we had to cheer ourselves up with whiskey. Lark Distillery on the harbour front, while not having a fire, was lavishly wood panelled and had real green chesterfields so we curled up and drank whiskey and brooded on the evil of man until we were drunk enough to giggle like a pair of dickheads over other things, then Pia from Sydney’s Black Joak Morris joined us and we drank and drank and gassed away about travelling, Italians, food, Morris bitching and whatever else we could stuff into the evening.

The Tassie trip ended in the dreary rain and I have left out the caprices of MONA gallery, dinners with Morris dancers, wines on Bruny and a hundred other little things. But we’ll go back (in the summer next time) when there will be more to tell; meanwhile I will sit with tea watching clouds rampage across the sky over black mountain, huddle a blanket to me, and write!

Gathering time. Bless the year time. Shiver together to remember we’re still alive and console ourselves against the snow. Fight time. You can’t have one without the other. We fight against winter to bless the trees and the year turning so heat comes back to us.

This year it is my turn to Give. I dance the wassail every year in the dark amid the fires with the others, but this year is different. We drew lots, so it is my turn to give blood. I am afraid, but I saw Stefan give last year; a boy who lives nearer the forest and it was mother the year before. It is right that I give. The big orchard is tended by us. And it will be Hazel’s turn one day too, and I will show her how.

She watches me as I tie plaits and ribbons in my hair. She has brought me apple twig, leafless in midwinter and she has pinned it to my belt. She helps me with my decorations of ribbons, bells and feathers. She has begun dancing too and I sit her on the low stool now by the hearth to braid her hair and fix the pheasant feathers in. We must dress and disguise ourselves. I have explained this to Hazel on our long walks across fallow fields in a grey and brown country to collect feathers and berries. We must wear the pheasant and kite feather so the birds bless us. We protect them too, with our wassail, to bring back the sun and give them food with our trees. We must wear some of the rowan, the blackthorn and snowberry to symbolise eternal life, how even in death, earth sustains its creatures. She nods gravely and picks the berries from the hedgerows and we bring them home together, dry them hung up over the hearth and decorate them with ribbons.

As we sit together by the fire during Yule, tying ribbons and eating toasted walnuts I tell her about the importance of ribbons. The bright colours awaken the spring spirits, fill their minds with colour so they remember what they must do when the sun brings longer days, so they can turn the world back to its purples, yellows, reds and greens. I tell her why we must wassail our trees, to drive out the demons from the roots, and terrify her sleep with stories of rotten apples and starvation. I make her squeal with tales of evil spirits that lie resting in the white flesh of a russet or cox and when it is bitten, fly into the minds of little girls and turn them blind and steal their minds. She shrieks and giggles but she knows these things are true and half knows the horror and disaster that comes when the dancers do not gather for the wassail.

I am feathered, furred and skirted. I am ribboned red for Braeburn and Hazel is Egremont green. I hand her the sticks for clashing. Our father is heating the ale at the stove, spiced and appled, and smiles at us. I know he is proud that we carry on these ways. That we dance to save our apples and we will tend them all our lives as will our children and theirs. He is proud that his daughter will give tonight, and when I drew my lot, I did not flinch, or look at him, but clenched my fist and nodded. I knew he watched. He hands us a cup of ale each, to warm us through before our journey tonight. Mother is outside, lighting the sticks and lanterns. Her ribbons are pippin yellow red and father’s are the brown of russets. I will lead them through the village to collect the dancers, then begins our trail round the acres of our homes in the ice wind we call Njordr to bless the trees of all our people. Then I will give my sacrifice and we will sing and dance and drink to scare the devils, wake the spirits and make the giving take.

I give the first shout and step out, banging willow, and my namesake ash. My bells clang in the stillness of the frosty night, as if crystals of frost could have voice and fall against each other. I take the firebrand from my mother. I am ready.

We begin our loop of the village. I lead this year, begin the song to sing each house that beckons them each out of doors. We stand before the black face of a cottage and shout, bang our ash and willow and demand them out. Then the eyes of the house blink open as my fellow youth who have been waiting ready, come out and join the song. They raise their willow and light it from mine. They hand us ale to sip, as is custom, then we all go on together, building the noise and flames into flickering towers piled up in the black sky. Cold night. Beautiful. But unfeeling and unloving, so we must put our warmth in.

We reach the highest point of the orchard. The trees’ bare fingers clutch at the wind and all is jumping shadows with our flames. We start here. First we sing, then my blood and hair are mixed with the ale and we all drink, then we sprinkle it on the roots of the trees here, and all the trees of our home. It is more than ritual. It is arduous, methodical, thorough and long. I sing my last song as one who is separate from these trees, then I will become part of them, mixed in forever, immortal in them, like all of us here.

Stefan steps forward. As giver last year, he must take this year. He hands me the knife, a mistletoe handle, carved with an apple. First one of my thin ribboned braids is severed from the feather mixed masses and dropped in the cup. My breath quickens now, shallow. I can feel Hazel shaking behind me and see the faces of my parents set and harden. Stefan takes the knife back. I pull my sleeve away from my left arm. He does the same. I see the scar on his arm yet his ordeal is still not over as he must hold my arm still, be deaf to my cry and spill my blood.

I am afraid now.

But I am afraid of more than pain. I am afraid that if I do not give, the blackbird I have not heard sing for dark months will not come back, nor the swallow; the sun that smiles on bare arms and an eased body soothed from shivering will remain forever hunched and covered. I am afraid the evil will come back into the world, as it did before, as we have all been told since we could speak, and before, and that Hazel will run out and stop the giving in her childish fear and in the end we will all die of the evil.

My mother told me these tales on winter nights as she dressed me in my first ribbons and I asked why I had to go out into the cold. I was appeased with the fun of shouting and singing and hot ale and dancing with the village. But I asked again when I was older. I tell Hazel now as the sun goes blood red and fat and the nights stretch eternally over us.

That years ago, men came. They built a stone building that was cold and cut us off from our fields and trees. They tried to make us go in and speak to a brutal statue of a dead bloody man, instead of to the spirits and the trees and air. They told us to stop dancing and singing but speak to their statue.

Some did.

The wassailing was left off. Then the canker crept into the trees. A little boy, fed an apple for his midday meal, cut in little pieces by his father while bringing the corn in, died. We saw the trees were bleeding. A red sap leaked out of them and their leaves withered, and the big orchard had to be felled to stop it spreading. After that orchardist hanged himself off one of his own trees, we cut him down, mixed his blood with the earth and danced the wassail. Mournfully; to wail our sadness as many of us had died and summer had not come. Then the beat of our drums and sticks warmed us, and we took heart, and we struck the stone building down and used its stones to make a new circle to the winter sun. And we danced the wassail every year until the apples came back, and the sun warmed us again and now every year on this night, the blood of a willing giver is mixed in with the roots so we never lose another drop unwillingly.

I look at Hazel hard. She takes a deep breath and screws her eyes up. While I stare at her light brown hair in the curling red of the fire, Stefan seizes my arm and slices clean. I cry out but clench the fist which he holds over the three handled wassail cup. I hold a handle of it and my blood drips quickly in. My tears fall silently, but I can’t stop my shoulders from shaking and I feel dizzy. Stefan looks from the cup to me and sees me swaying then looks frantically at my mother who nods.

It is enough.

I hold the cup to me and he raises up my bleeding arm and swiftly bandages it tight. I hold it up in the air while he kisses my forehead roughly, then with his arm high about my shoulder and neck he cheers and we all cheer, and I drink the ale and my blood. He sips next, then I pass the cup to Hazel, who drinks, then passes it round her people. We sprinkle bloody ale on the tree roots systematically, then warm ourselves with a song and a stamp and dance to our drums. I cry-sing and Stefan keeps hold of my waist until I am strong again. My mother kisses me and then father leads the dance away through the trees again, brandishing the smoky, eye-watering torches to banish the demons as his ribbons flail out behind him, and our passage round the village’s trees begins again until every apple tree has been blessed and exorcised.

We danced long into the night at the ale house. The fires burned all night, we drank and we sang. I spun Hazel round until our red and green skirts merged to an Elstar apple blur. She is growing strong and brave and has learnt all the medicinal uses for Pendragons this year. And Stefan and I stood outside when the wind dropped under the naked arms of our trees and felt blessed to be part of them.