OIBELO KENETLO
N.B. - OIBELO means ‘flame’, KENETLO means ‘clan’ and NANÎ means ‘grandmother’ or ‘ancestor mother’ in Proto-Celtic. Please find out more about Proto-Celtic and those that have been working to recover this language here.
She waits by the small fire. The air is warm and the breeze is scented with wildflowers as it blows between the trees. The NANÎ waits, as she has for days. Her shawl is on the earth and her arms are bare in the sunshine. A smile plays about her lips, her joints ache less in the summer. The sun is shining and the flames of the small fire are almost invisible. The old woman fingers her string of amber beads, passing the well-worn smooth rounds through her fingers as she whispers quiet words of power. Then she hears it; the first.
A woman of middle years steps into the glade, brown hair streaked with grey. Amber lays around her throat, and about her waist is a belt, with many pouches attached. She nods her head in greeting to the NANÎ and unties a pouch woven in bark. Nestled inside is a fungus, a very particular kind, and inside that fungus is held the glowing core of the woman’s hearth. She lays the spark in the small fire, which grows ever so slightly, then hangs a battered copper kettle over it to make the tea. The old woman and the middling years woman laugh and chat as they drink their tea, swapping tales, recipes and gossip.
Over the coming days more and more women arrive, all carrying a bark and fungus pouch, all laying their own hearth-fires in the fire. Some are peaty and smoky. Some burn quick and hot. All carry words and whispers and longings and, as more are added, the fire grows bigger and bigger. All the women wear amber of different shades, pale sunlight, honey and wolf’s eye, burning and glowing like the fire.
Impromptu singing, dancing and story-telling break out, there is a lot of laughter and a lot of tears. But it is when the last woman arrives, child just weaned and left behind for the first time, that the real work begins. The women settle themselves in silence around the great fire as dusk falls and they stare into the flames until full dark. And then the NANÎ starts the chant, loud and low.
The words are picked up and passed around the circle, the women tasting them in their mouths, shaping and holding them. The NANÎ stands and begins to stamp and shuffle her way around the circle, thumping her feet into the weaving of words. Other women stand and begin to move and sway, arms high, hair spinning, hips flowing. They thread in and out of each other, moving faster and faster.
The circle is wide and spinning like a whirlpool when the mother, the last to arrive, leaps over the flames of the great fire. A cheer rises up to the moon and stars above, shining down on the sacred fire dance. Some women start to flicker with the flames and others leap over the fire and their sisters. Some turn to smoke and glide sensuously around the flames, slow and light. Through the night the fire-women sing and dance, spurred on by the flames of so many hearths.
In the grey morning-light the women slowly start to gather themselves together again, pulling in their tendrils of smoke, gathering their ashes back in. They scoop up their hearth-sparks from the sacred fire, stowing the revived flames safely in their bark and fungus pouches. Tears fall and the women clasp each other goodbye before setting out on their journeys home, ready to tend their home hearthfires once again.
© Elena Tornberg-Lennox 2023