Elizabeth Hopkinson's Hidden Grove

  Art by Anna Hopkinson 2024 I've been reading the Advent Lyrics from the Exeter Book as Christmas approches. These are poems in Old English. (The version of the English language brought to the British Isles by the Angles, Saxons etc.) that explore the mysteries of the Incarnation and Virgin Birth in early medieval aliteration and symbolism. In the fourth lyric - addressed to the Virgin Mary - one phrase stood out for me. ond no gebrosnad wearð mægðhad se micla. Which translates as:  and your mighty maidenhead was not destroyed Your mighty maidenhead! This makes Mary sound like a shieldmaiden, a Valkyrie. I love it.  It reminds me of some of the tales of mighty virgins I've retold in my  Asexual Fairy Tales  books. Of Sir Galahad and Clorinda the Knight. Of the potency of amethyst, and the magic power of the unicorn. In fact, that even reminds me of the perfect asexual comment that said, "Forever a unicorn. No one is majestic enough to ride me." Mighty and majes...

  Our Lady of Montevergine by Anna Hopkinson Please note: This article does not intend to appropriate the lived experience of Black or Romani people, gay men or traditional Third Genders. Please read the linked articles for wider perspectives. Night was drawing on fast, and with it temperatures none could survive. The ground was covered in a crust of snow. The lovers’ extremities began to turn blue. By morning, if the wolves didn’t hurry, early walkers would find two bodies encased in blocks of ice. But it was not the wolves who came. It was the Madonna. The Black Madonna, they called her. Our Lady of the Shadow-Side.  It’s Pride Month and - aside from posting rainbows and reminders that the A in LGBTQIA+ isn’t silent - I’m crowdfunding a book of Diverse & Inclusive Saints called Legends from Lindisfarne.  One of the most obviously Pride-centred stories in the book is called “Our Lady of Montevergine: Affirmer of Same Sex Couples”. It’s a retelling of a medieval legen...

  This Saturday I became a full member of the Community of Aidan & Hilda , a dispersed New Monastic community inspired by Celtic Christian spirituality of the 1st millennium AD. Its members come from many different countries and branches of the church, but all follow a common Way of Life and daily prayer pattern, as well as meeting and supporting each other in various ways. (Mostly via Zoom since I’ve joined, for obvious reasons!) The vow-taking ceremony is called First Voyage of the Coracle, and the newly-vowed member is known as a Voyager. Any die-hard Narnia fans like me will remember a coracle as being the small, round boat Reepicheep the mouse finds in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader , and which eventually takes him to Aslan’s country. As a North Irishman and a medievalist, CS Lewis was influenced in writing Dawn Treader by the ancient Celtic tradition of the imrama journey, a symbolic, spiritual voyage that changes the voyager. One such example from medieval times is the V...

  “The holly bears a berry as red as any blood…” There are many berries we associate with Christmas time. I still need to get around to making this year’s frozen haws (hawthorn berries) into some kind of jam or syrup. (Blame the post-vaccine fatigue!)  I’d like to share with you three traditional Christmas tales about berries and cherries. The Miracle of Marjatta I retell this episode from the Finnish national epic The Kalevala in my book Asexual Myths & Tales. It’s a version of the Nativity story, told through the lens of Finland’s pagan past.  The maiden Marjatta (Mary) becomes miraculously pregnant by eating a cowberry that cries out to her, “Pick me!” When the pregnancy starts to show, one believes her tale, and she is forced to search around for a sauna in which to give birth. She asks Herod (here, the village headman) for use of his sauna, but he refuses. So she goes into a stable, where the cattle create a sauna with their warm breath. Her son becomes the one w...

  Today, I visited two famous caves in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire: St Robert’s Cave and the much more famous Mother Shipton’s Cave. Both are located by the banks of the River Nidd in the remains of Royal Forest of Knaresborough. Both once housed figures who were considered capable of working (or speaking) wonders. Both spoke truth to power in their day. So why is Ursula Shipton (neé Sontheil) remembered as a witch, while Robert Flower is remembered as a saint? I had been wanting to revisit both caves for some time. And to me, both felt like sacred sites. The cave where Ursula Shipton was allegedly born during a storm, is next to the mystical petrifying or dropping well. Water from a stream pools on top of a cave, then drops into a pool beneath, gradually turning anything in its path to stone. It’s an enchanting spot!  And round the side of that is the entrance to the “wishing well”, a cleft in the rock where the magical water pools, and into which you can dip your hand. Th...

Authors generally have a way of talking about Narnia. I’ve noticed it at the various literature festivals I’ve been to and in articles I’ve read online. It goes something like this. “When I was a kid, I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and fell in love with it. Then, at the age of 13/18/32, I noticed all the Christian symbolism and felt betrayed. I’ve never enjoyed it in the same way since.” Whenever I hear/read this, it’s like a stab to the heart. I want to get a word in. Because my experience of Narnia is the complete reverse. I first heard the story of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe  as told over several school playtimes by my best friend, the son of a local nonconformist minister. I went on to become completely obsessed by the whole series, reading the books over and over again. Now, I don’t know if my friend or his parents told me, or I just worked it out because I was such a religiously precocious child (I was!) but I can’t remember a time when I didn’t...

I recently picked up a second-hand copy of Nigel Cawthorne's The Strange Laws of Old England.   As a source for story ideas, this is a brilliant resource, full of all sorts of strange legal goings-on, not just in Old England, but also in Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man etc. One thing that caught my attention as a fantasist was a short paragraph saying about Henry III - the king responsible for the re-issued version of Magna Carta I was fortunate to see myself this year in Lincoln.  (There is more than one copy, in case you are about to protest that it is somewhere else!)  The book says that Henry signed a law making it a capital offence to kill, wound or maim a fairy. This sounds almost as if Henry III was making the fairy a protected species, as we would do nowadays with endangered animals.  However, although Henry III had a menagerie, I doubt the fairy was considered an endangered species in the 13th century.  In fact, as a super-pious king, and one who passe...